Kimberly's Ramblings
by Kimberly T
Summary: Part 1: Read after Vinnie's Luck, Yama's Path. Part 2: after Kangeikai. Part 3: after Mating Games 5. Part 4 & Part 5: after MG 7. Part 6 after MG 9, 10 & 11, Housing Issues and Ishimura 3: Secrets. Part 7 after Mating Games 12. Part 8: after Deadly Moon.
1. Ramblings 1

**Kimberly's Ramblings #1: on "Vinnie's Luck" and "Yama's Path"**

Greetings! I just wanted to share a few more thoughts with you about the stories that hopefully you have just read: "Vinnie's Luck" and "Yama's Path." If you haven't read them yet, please do so before going any further, as this Author's Note contains "spoilers" for both. (If you have read them, you're probably amazed that I've managed to come up with so many Author's Notes, both here and in the text of "Yama's Path", for just two stories. What can I say? Sometimes I like to ramble on about interesting things.)

Vinnie is, like it or not (and he doesn't), an important part of the Gargoyles universe. He is a representative of the Everyman, the poor schmuck who's just trying to get on with his life and earn an honest buck, and quite frankly could do without those winged critters that swoop out of the sky in the middle of the night and have a tendency to make things go "Crunch!" or "Boom!" All men and women have a tolerance threshold, a point up to which they'll put up with their life being messed with (not happily, but they'll put up with it), but beyond that point they will Fight Back with every weapon they can get their hands on, in an effort to restore or avenge their status quo. Some people, the more saintly among us, have very high thresholds; some have very low thresholds. Judging by Vinnie's misfortunes as related in the episode "Vendettas", he actually has a fairly high tolerance threshold. (Possibly higher than his IQ, but I can't say for certain.) Honestly think about it: if you lost first your 'wheels', then your license to drive, _and then_ your job and source of income, due to these weird winged beasties that fly around roaring and making things go "Boom!", wouldn't _you_ want a heaping helping of revenge? But Vinnie doesn't start on his vendetta until after he loses his job a _second_ time on account of gargoyles….

Then we witness what makes him unique among the Everymen: his method of revenge. A lot of people I know would have, under such circumstances and not yet really believing that gargoyles counted as people, gone hunting for them with a high-powered rifle and steel-jacketed ammunition, if not a freakin' bazooka. (I gotta admit that I myself would likely have gone out armed with a rifle and heavy-duty tranquilizer darts, to bag me a gargoyle to show to the authorities: "See, I told you they exist! So I wasn't driving drunk, and can I at least have my driver's license back?") But what does Vinnie Gregarino go hunting with? _A cream-pie shooter_. I know it's a cartoon, but **_geez_**, guys! Honestly, I think the scriptwriters for "Vendettas" must have O.D.'d on a weekend-long Laurel & Hardy film festival just before writing the script for that show. But I did my best to come up with a more-or-less understandable reason for Vinnie to go Vaudeville on us…

I painted Vinnie as an "Ugly American" with some difficulty. I honestly rather like Japan, even if I'll never, ever fit in over there (compared to the average Japanese woman, I'm a cross between an Amazon and a Wagnerian opera star: way too tall, way too busty, and _wayyy_ too loud and opinionated) and I haven't been to the country in over five years. The first draft of the story had Vinnie bowing, removing his shoes and wielding his chopsticks like a proper guest, just as so many of us in my squadron tried to be when we were deployed over there. But I finally and regretfully, after going over the transcripts for "Vendetta" and "The Journey" twice, concluded that Vinnie just wasn't that type. Nope, he'd be like some of the jocks in my squadron who kept their shoes on, burped in public and speared their chopsticks into their rice, not knowing the proper customs and not really caring, either, so long as the beer was potent enough. (And Japanese beer can get pretty potent, too; USDA laws don't apply in Tokyo.) So I let him bitch about some of the more obvious cultural differences between Japan and the U.S., and make stupid mistakes and gaffe's even after he'd been living in Japan for nearly a month. But I like to think that, if he stayed in the country long enough, he would adapt as well as any _gaijin_ can to life in the Land of the Rising Sun.

Another of Vinnie's more admirable points is that, once he's gotten his licks in, he doesn't hold a grudge. This makes him as unlike the Canmores as a human can get; that family has grudge-holding down to a science. (Which brings up the question of what will happen to Vinnie, once the Quarrymen find out that the man they undoubtedly labeled as a Traitor to Humanity, after he stopped their leader from killing Goliath, is coming back to New York… with a gargoyle stowed in his luggage! Uh-oh…) No, Vinnie's not a smart guy… but he's actually a nice guy. In my book, that counts for more.

Honestly, I was a little surprised myself at how Yama, near-universally regarded by Gargoyles fans as Not Really a Nice Guy, turned out to be a nice guy too. The first time I saw the episode "Bushido", I had a pretty negative opinion of him, though I liked Sora and thought Kai was an excellent clan leader. And for the longest time, I thought Sora was Kai's mate! But then, somewhere--Station 8's "Ask Greg" pages, I think--I read that Sora was actually mated to Yama. My first thought, of course, was "Poor girl! Married to a lying bum! How can she get out of such a mismatch?" And further on the Station 8 website, Greg answered that same question from another fan, about whether Sora would stay with Yama or dump him, with a vague answer like "that remains to be seen." (Uh-_huh_. Everybody who's satisfied with that answer, raise your hands! …I don't see any hands…)

So I started writing an aftermath story for "Bushido." And a weird thing happened… Yama turned out to be a nice guy after all. But a frustrated soul, yearning for more than Ishimura could give him. If he'd been in another Disney cartoon, he'd have been singing along with Belle, "_I want much more than this provincial life_!" And he talked back to Kai because Kai _let_ him talk back to him, indulging him where another leader would have slapped him down hard and fast, probably before he had a chance to get more than one word out of his mouth in front of guests. Obviously, Kai and Yama had a deep relationship between them… The two really should have had their names switched as hatchlings, in my opinion. Kai (one of the many words for "sea", in Japanese) is really the mountain, the solid and steady rock upon which the clan rests the leadership and all its traditions. Yama (the Japanese word for "mountain") is the sea, restless and shifting, seeking the far horizons. But they grew up together, one somehow complementing the other, and formed the sort of bond that can't easily be broken, even when one becomes leader to the clan. Anyone else out there read **_ElfQuest_**? To me, Yama and Kai are very much like Skywise and Cutter. That became clearer and clearer as more and more scenes were written, fleshing out more of their history. They aren't just rookery brothers; they're _brothers_ in all but blood. They've laughed and cried and shouted and fought and made up and laughed some more together, and if it weren't for that bond between himself and Kai, Yama would have made a crate on the sly and shipped himself off to Tokyo decades ago. It was just too bad that Taro picked up on Yama's frustration, and knew just how to exploit it…

Since the "Ask Greg" webpages made it clear that Sora was Yama's mate, who was Kai's mate? Some folks have written that Kai is unmated, since "the leader must stand alone", referring to the idea that duty and the demands of leadership must always take precedence over the heart. That argument was used for Doc Savage, too, but in my humble opinion, that noble ideal was first proposed by some archaic bozo who'd never had any luck with women in the first place. An important leader, especially, must have a wife/husband/mate who is steadfast and loyal, someone he/she can relax with and trust with at least a few of his/her many worries and cares, or the leader is apt to burn out fast. For every head of state or corporate exec who ever held to that 'noble ideal', and every other one that ended up in some sort of widely-publicized marital scandal, there are fifty more who've sworn they couldn't have made it through all those years without the support of their spouses. And so, enter Sakaki, the Leetah to Kai's Cutter. And why didn't we see her in the episode "Bushido"? Because she was in the rookery with the hatchlings, as First Rookery Keeper… But even though she ends up spending a lot more time with the hatchlings than with her mate, she and Yama are Kai's family/support group, the foundation of his life; he'd be utterly shattered, lost and bereft without them.

But what about Sora? It was odd how the story was started because of her situation, but at first I couldn't quite get a grasp on her character. Greg Weisman also said plainly that she and Yama were of different rookery generations, a rarity among gargoyles; why had she chosen him instead of one of her rookery brothers? Because, despite her seemingly shy manner at first, Sora is actually a very strong-willed female who, when she knows what she wants, sets out to get it. And she's very intelligent, bright enough to get impatient with her slower siblings and to need extra credit work in school just to keep her from being bored out of her pretty horned skull. And Yama happened to be one of the clan's teachers (he _had_ to be something other than a warrior by training, considering how poorly he fought against Angela and Taro; that had to be a lucky punch that took Goliath out. But he knew that short-circuiting Taro's electrically charged fans together would overload them…) When Yama gave Sora the extra attention she needed, providing lessons in more advanced math and science, it was the start of her schoolgirl crush on him. A crush that the clan elders would have frowned heavily upon, if Sakaki and Kai hadn't noticed it first, and taken steps that ended in Yama temporarily setting aside his teaching duties, without loss of honor for anyone. But Sora would not let him set her aside as well, as merely a "teacher's pet," and it probably took only one thorough kiss for Yama to realize that Sora was apparently serious about him, he was incredibly lonely, and maybe this could work out after all… Most times, a schoolgirl crush either fades away with time or is dashed upon the hard rocks of reality; I speak from painful experience. But every once in a great while, very _very_ rarely, it becomes something much more; something that, to quote Shakespeare, "is an ever-fixed mark, that looks on tempests and is never shaken. It is the star to every wandering bark whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken…" And Sora, who would have followed Yama into the forest even after learning of his duplicity and betrayal, was Yama's star as he wandered in his exile. But a tree great enough to withstand tempests without being shaken may still be undermined by vermin gnawing at the roots…

One last little note: Judge Ooka, mentioned in "Yama's Path", is not only the Japanese equivalent of Sherlock Holmes; he was an actual person, and played a fairly important part in Japan's history. Folk tales of Ooka's cleverness and wisdom are told to Japanese children, and a few of them have reached the Western shores in a book that is currently, regretfully, out-of-print: Ooka the Wise: Tales of Old Japan. If you can find a copy of this book in your local library or used bookstore, read it; I can virtually guarantee you won't be disappointed! Probably the most famous anecdote, included in the book I just mentioned, is the one about a miser who wanted to be paid for the _smell_ of his fish cooking; a student that was boarding with him would eat his plain rice at the same time the miser was making his dinner, and smelling the cooking fish as he ate would make the rice seem flavorful. Everyone thought the case would be tossed out of court, but Judge Ooka agreed to hear it. And astonishingly, he agreed that the miser should be paid! But only with the _sound_ of the student's money. The student jingled the few coins he had in his hand, and the case was closed. But it's another story in that same volume that got me to thinking about the gargoyles of Ishimura. See, one day one of Judge Ooka's grandchildren got to boasting with his buddies (you know, the "My dad can beat up your dad" stuff), and he bragged that his grandfather could bring a stone statue to life… Find the book if you can, and enjoy a good read for any age!

Clear skies,

Kimberly T.


	2. Ramblings 2

**Kimberly's Ramblings 2: Since You Asked…**

Greetings! In the past I've received emails asking about this and that in my "Life Goes On" series, questions about why Goliath is acting this way or Angela is acting like that, or what Demona is referring to when she says this, that or the other thing. I've also received questions about my stories for Christine. Rather than just keep writing the same responses again and again, here are my answers to just a few of the most frequently asked questions, okay? It's not that I don't **love** to receive and reply to email; I just want to save time, that I can use for writing more fanfic!

First, my stories for the fanfic universe of Christine Morgan: Most of the time, people write in to me with story ideas for more! "What if they did this?" or "Would you consider writing about that?" And I always say: this is Christine's universe, not mine.

I'm one of Christine's beta-readers (not always best at plot and characterization, but really hot on correct spelling and use of grammar), so I get advance peeks at some of her stories, but not all of them. And even on the ones I do get advance peeks at, I know better than to give anyone else hints at what's going to happen next; if I did, I'd lose my sneak-peeking privileges! Now where the gargoyles are concerned, I occasionally suggest minor stuff to her, usually about minor characters. But (1) Never anything about Jericho—he's all hers, and (2) Never anything that would divert the overall series from the course she has planned.

All the stories I've written for her are "fillers" in the timeline she's already established, highlighting some corner of her universe that she either hasn't had time or didn't have the inclination to write about herself. She approves every word of every story, and if she says "no", that means no. That word gets substituted, that scene gets deleted, or that story is never posted. I'm not saying she's a harsh taskmistress (although I suspect she'd love to be called one! ;-) ), since she actually lets me get away with a lot of little ideas. But I always, always run them past her first before committing them to paper/electrons. So, to people who'd like me to write about this or that for Christine's universe: ask **her**, not me. If she emails me and says she likes the idea, **_and_** if it strikes that creative spark in my brain, who knows? It might get written.

Yes, I will admit that I've had bubbling in the back of my brain, an AU version of Christine's universe, that branches off from hers a couple years after the events of Devil's Night. But it will likely never see the light of day/the dark of the archives; there's far too much to write about in the "Life Goes On" series!

Regarding my own series: Of course I always get letters asking about 'what happens next', but my answer to that is usually "wait and see." Right now I'm discussing 'what happened before'; the backstories. Little scraps of history, and bits of biology, that influence my character's actions and reactions. If it was posted in my recently updated "Getting Biblical" or the first "Kimberly's Ramblings", I'm not going to repeat it here. So if your question isn't answered here, read those before asking, okay? And if it's not there either, feel free to ask!

**There's Fey, and there's Elves…**

Yes, my series has a crossover with Elfquest, as well as another series that shall not be discussed here. I brought the Elfquest connection up back in "The Times They Are A-Changin', Part 2", but never actually spelled it out and named names that would be familiar to fellow Elfquest fans. If you're not an Elfquest fan, feel free to skip over the next few paragraphs, okay? For those people who are fans and have asked what happened, even if I can keep up my current pace of posting a story or vignette every week, it'll be next year at the earliest before any of the details would be able to come out in the series itself. So…

Envision an AU/Worldpool version of Elfquest in which Winnowill, the evil and vampiric elfwoman, was not killed by the Djun and spiritually imprisoned by Rayek. That's what I had in mind; a Winnowill who might have been defeated soundly by the Wolfriders, but was still capable of rising again and causing havoc and misery wherever she went.

In my universe, not only is mixing Fey and mortal magics a dangerous business; so is mixing magic and psionics. The elves of Elfquest are high psionics, capable of manipulating matter and communicating mind-to-mind. In the year 987 in my main 'verse (never figured out what the equivalent year would be in the AU Elfquest 'verse,) the Wolfriders were in the middle of a pitched battle with Winnowill at the same time that the Magus, in my universe, was attempting a difficult spell that would supposedly allow him to speak with angels and ask for Heavenly wisdom (already secretly in love with Princess Katherine but stymied by medieval rules and his low birth, he wanted either advice on how to court her and win over her father, or advice on how to ease the pain of unrequited love.)

The magic spell was botched and breached dimensions to the "World of Two Moons", and when Winnowill sensed it she threw enough psionic energy at it to create a magical/psionic interface between her world and medieval Scotland, that transported roughly ten square miles of Scottish

countryside to her world instead. She didn't exactly plan it that way; the fight was going badly for her, and she was just looking for anything to distract the Wolfriders and their psionic 'magic-users' before they could beat her again.

The hunting party of eleven watchbeasts and a half-dozen gargoyles who were just out of sight of the castle when it happened, got confused by the sudden change in the stellar configurations and the appearance of a second moon, and ended up going the wrong way, further away from the castle instead of returning to it. When the interface was severed and Wyvern Castle and all its inhabitants were returned to medieval Scotland, they were out of the interface zone and were left behind in the other world.

The search party that went out to find the missing ones before the interface ended ran into Winnowill, the 'tall, pale woman' that Lexington mentioned when he relayed the story to Angela back in "The Times They Are A-Changin', Part 2". Looking to gain strength from beings that were ignorant of her powers, Winnowill drained most of the search party of their life energies, but the two known to fans as Desdemona and Othello (now Coldfire and Coldstone) fought her off and knocked her out before she could actually kill anyone, subduing her until the Wolfriders could come for her.

As a combined thank-you for dealing with Winnowill, and an apology for the trouble she'd caused, the healer Leetah and the High One Timmain together crafted an enhanced fertility spell, that they spread to cast on the entire gargoyle clan just before the two worlds separated again. That's why the Wyvern clan had that unexpected breeding season in the next full moon, which resulted in the clutch of eggs from which Angela, Gabriel and the rest emerged. But the two gargoyles who knew it would happen never tried to explain why; they figured, who would have believed them?

**What about Sora?**

I've also been asked: After the way Sora cried when Yama left for America at the end of "Yama's Path", why didn't she rush out to Yama as soon as he arrived in the village in "Kangeikai"? And why are Miya and the others so quick to accept Di-Mono/Demona as a potential new mate for Yama?

Sora just might have rushed out and thrown herself at Yama, if she'd known ahead of time that he was returning so soon, but she didn't. None of the clan knew that Yama had returned so swiftly, until they awoke that night; Hiroshi's phone call to let everyone know they were inbound came just after dawn. And the villagers who informed the clan that he was back, also told them that he'd brought four new gargoyles with him to join the clan. For such a historic occasion, protocol dictates that the clan leader and clan elders be the first ones to go out and greet the arrivals, not some youngster with no clan title yet. Even if she'd still been Yama's mate, she would have had to wait her turn… and by her own choice, she was no longer his mate.

Sora was in the crowd, when Yama opened the temple gates to let the new gargoyles in, but she didn't have a chance to pull Yama aside and talk to him privately before she saw Miya with the kimono and obi. She saw Miya give the obi to Yama, saw Yama tie Di-Mono's kimono with it, and Sora knows the significance of that act as well as everyone else in the clan. After Miya basically announced for everyone's benefit that she thought Yama and Di-Mono would make a good mated pair… and after Yama apparently agreed with her… Sora left the gathering and hid somewhere to cry for the rest of the night.

Kai, Miya and nearly everyone else in the clan are very disappointed with Sora. Yes, Botan was the one who plotted to persuade her to dismate Yama while Yama was in disgrace and exile, but she was the one who actually did the dismating. And after Yama returned with his honor restored, she at first utterly refused to reconcile with him. Even after he began gently courting her again, trying to start anew, she gave him no real sign of favoring his suit over Botan or Anzu's, until the night of the combat trials. And at those trials she publicly rejected him, after Botan said that Yama's winning the fight was somehow a sign of his cruel barbarian heart.

A fair number of the clan actually sympathized with Sora's choice to dismate Yama in the first place; by keeping his dealings with Taro secret from even her, Yama was hardly treating her as a true mate and equal. But after the second rejection…

Yes, Botan was the real villain behind it all, just as Taro was the real villain in the episode "Bushido", and Xanatos was the villain who tricked Goliath into invading Cyberbiotics' airship back in "Awakenings." But in each case, the one who was tricked into doing something, was still responsible for his/her own actions. A lot of people have trouble accepting this, but being tricked into doing something does not absolve you of wrongdoing; it just means that someone else should take some of the blame… but not all of it.

Yama accepted the disgrace of his actions, and paid the price for them that his clan leader demanded, in full. But Sora either refused to accept how wrong she'd been, or just had too much pride to publicly admit it. The closest she ever even came to it, the closest she ever came to asking Yama to forgive her, was that night at the boathouse before Yama left… and she just stood there.

Considering all that, it's no wonder that Kai and the rest are perfectly okay with Yama finding someone else to court. They don't wish Sora ill, but they do wish better for Yama than what he's been subjected to lately.

Besides, Di-Mono **_appears_** to be the same age as Yama, and same-age pairings are the rule in gargoyles society (Yama and Sora's mating was the first such cross-generation pairing in nearly two hundred years.) It may be that most of the clan thinks a more conventional mating would last a lifetime, unlike the last one. And there is still a male of Sora's age left unmated, who is interested in Sora even if she's currently not interested in him.

As for Di-Mono/Demona herself... Yes, she's currently teetering on a house of cards. It can't last forever. But after losing so much over the centuries, and being given a bare chance to have some of it back again, she's desperate enough to try anyway…

And that's all I've really got to say at the moment. Well, yes, there's a lot more I _could_ say, but did you think I was going to give everything away here?

Clear skies,

Kimberly


	3. Ramblings 3

**Kimberly's Ramblings 3: More Q&A**

It's me again, stepping out of the storyline to answer a few more questions that have been asked by readers. In no particular order:

**How has Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of so much of New Orleans affected you? Will it affect your story?**

Has Hurricane Katrina affected my life? No more than such a tragedy would affect any helpless bystander. Contrary to what some folks may have thought, I live a long, long ways away from New Orleans and the floodwaters; high and dry—well, high anyway—in the Pacific Northwest. We may get more than our fair share of rain, but no hurricane worries a'tall. (So why haven't I written any fics about gargoyles in the Northwest in general, and Seattle in particular? Patience, patience…)

Honestly, I not to think too much about the damage Katrina did to the Big Easy. So many of the tourist attractions that the clan visited in Mating Games Parts 4 and 5 and the upcoming Part 6 have either been destroyed, or so seriously damaged that they may never recover. The Audubon Zoo came through more-or-less okay except for downed trees, but the Aquarium of the Americas lost thousands of fish, nearly all their water-breathers, when their emergency generator failed and the air pumps and other devices keeping the water aerated and at even temperatures stopped working. All the restaurants and bars I've mentioned such as Pat O'Brien's, Tujague's, and the Pelican Club, are all closed until further notice, and may never reopen. Likewise for the Musée Conti Wax Museum, which reportedly took heavy damage to the displays on the ground floor.I've even heard disturbing rumors about Blaine Kern's Mardi Gras World that I can't confirm...

But all that is _far in the future_, as far as my stories are concerned. Hey, people, I'm not finished with 1996 yet! I've got a long, long ways to go before having to worry about how to integrate the hurricane disaster into plots and story arcs. (Though I do have a couple ideas already…) In the meantime, the folks from Manhattan will continue to play tourist in 1996 New Orleans, and see just a little of the glory that New Orleans was, and may be again someday.

**Didn't Lex and Rebecca agree to become mates awfully fast?**

Actually, it seemed pretty fast to everybody! But most of those who heard it, after they got over being stunned, thought much the way Ursula did when explaining to Hudson. Among the limited choices of suitors, Lexington and Rebecca are clearly well-suited for each other; better than Rebecca with any other male and Lex with any other female. So by announcing now that they'll become mates, they give the others more time to prepare for the mating ceremony (and no, it will not be easy to put web-winged Lexington into a tuxedo.) They're already friends, and historically there have been lots of marriages that began with the couple still just liking each other, not truly loving each other, but ended happily ever after. So, why not? There are only a few people who keep thinking of the old saying, "_Marry in haste, repent at leisure_." And right now they're keeping their mouths firmly shut.

**Why is Marie such a bitch, anyway? Gargoyles aren't supposed to act like that…**

So it's okay to have a psychotic female like Demona, who'd gladly kill every human in the world given an opportunity and who's also ready to kill any gargoyle that gets in her way, but it's not okay to portray a female who's just really unpleasant to be around? Some people have interesting priorities… :-)

No, Marie is just my way of showing that even when they're not programmed by Xanatos (Thailog) or traumatized like tragedy (Demona), not all gargoyles are good people. Marie is just a self-centered bitch. They do exist, y'know, even outside the Hollywood stereotype. She's beautiful, she's musically talented, and she knows it... and she thinks that she deserves to be running the show simply because of that.

The problem with Marie was actually caused by a human-acquired trait. Marie's mother, Abigail, was one of the clan's rookery keepers; the clan generally keeps to the tradition of children being raised by all the clan, but her mother knew who she was as soon as she broke shell. Marie looks just like her father Remigius, a male with a more-or-less human face and white feathered wings, except he's sky-blue; Marie got her peach-pink, Caucasian-like coloring from Abigail. Abigail recognized Marie for her daughter, and subconsciously favored her as a result... spoiling her, as it turned out. Abigail told Marie that she was just the bestest little hatchling in the whole wide world, and Marie believed it, particularly when that rookery keeper didn't say that sort of thing to any of the other hatchlings. Combine clear favoritism with great beauty and even a smidgen of talent, and you have a superior attitude; a self-centered bitch in the making.

Ursula saw what was happening, and tried to forestall it, giving Abigail more than one stern talking to and threatening to report her to the clan leader if she didn't knock it off and start acting like a proper rookery keeper. Each time, Abigail would apologize, be standoffish towards Marie for a couple of days, then start favoring her again… (Marie noticed the pattern too, which is why she dislikes Ursula as much as all the others in Marie's generation like her.)

Ursula didn't even try to negate Abigail's influence by tearing Marie down as much as Abigail was boosting her up; that would have been incredibly wrong. Instead, Ursula and the other two rookery keepers tried hard to give the other hatchlings just as much attention and affection as Marie was getting… but with three people minding eleven rambunctious hatchlings, the math was against them. And calling in the hatchlings' biological parents to take care of their children was out of the question; even if they could be sure of who belonged to whom, not all of the last breeding generation were still alive (both of Rebecca's biological parents died three years before she hatched, and Yvette's mother had also died).

In 1972, the current crop of hatchlings left the rookery in order to begin their formal schooling and apprenticeships. But by then the damage was done; everyone thought Marie was the finest, especially Marie herself, and she became the Queen Bee of her generation. And even though Abigail remained in the rookery with the newly-laid eggs, she found enough excuses to visit Marie, and coo over her and tell Marie that she was the best and deserved everything, that Ursula was never able to dismantle the hierarchy among the hatchlings that Marie had set up, that left poor Rebecca and Martha on the bottom rungs of the social ladder.

In 1974 Abigail died, from being shot by a fireworks rocket while out gliding over New Orleans on the 4th of July. But it wasn't until 1988, when Marie finally overplayed her hand by getting caught red-handed destroying one of Isabel's sculptures and was temporarily banished, that Ursula was able to convince the other young adults that Marie was the wrong sort of leader for them; that what she'd been doing all those years had been wrong, and they shouldn't accept it anymore.

Marie's circle of power was broken… but too late to do much good, really; Martha and Rebecca still felt like the lowest of the low, and Marie has fought constantly ever since to regain her status at the top of the heap (by pulling everyone else down, of course), making everyone miserable in the process. By 1996, most everyone is heartily sick of the whole thing, and more than one gargoyle in the New Orleans Clan is muttering that even if Brooklyn chooses another female for a mate, they'll urge the Manhattan clan to take Marie with them when they leave.

**I found out "Catherine Chandler" from your story "Unsolved Mysteries, Redux" is actually from an old TV show called "Beauty and the Beast." The TV shows site said she was in love with this lion-man named Vincent, but not much more than that. Where can I find out more**?

Ohboy. That's actually a somewhat difficult question to answer in less than twenty pages… which is what I estimate it would take to give a full episode-by-episode accounting of the show. Man, I wish they'd come out with the DVD of the series already… the website tvshowsondvd dot com says it's the 34th most popular unreleased show, out of thousands! Why isn't somebody at Republic Pictures getting a clue?!

Anyway, I'm afraid you're going to need to do a lot of searching of fan sites and TV-shows-in-general sites, to find decent, more-than-three-sentences reviews and synopses of "Beauty and the Beast" episodes. The crucial ones that figure in Matt's tale would most likely be found on third season fan sites, but those are pretty rare; most "beastie" fans hate the third season of B&tB far, far more than most fans of Gargoyles dislike the Goliath Chronicles! But you'll need to do a lot of hunting and reading, to find out exactly what was going on in New York--and under New York--while Matt was watching over a comatose and officially "dead" Catherine Chandler. Either that, or go on eBay and bid on one of the bootleg DVD sets that pop up there from time to time, fulfilling a need for desperate fans. Actually, if you enjoy a good romantic drama you should do that anyway; trust me, they're worth it!)

But for those of you who do have slightly-better-than-vague memories of the show: In terms of the episode run, I covered events from the end of "Though Lovers Be Lost" to "Invictus"; all part of the dreadful third season that was inflicted on horrified fans, most of whom would rather it had never happened. Like I said in the Author's Note that followed "Unsolved Mysteries, Redux", I decided that, rather than ignore that entire season, I'd fix it by showing how Catherine hadn't really died after all, but why she hadn't reappeared until after the last episode had been aired. (The last episode aired in the U.S. A., that is. There were two more made that were aired only in Canada, "The Reckoning" and "Legacies", that were so improbable that I'm just ignoring them entirely.)

Just as an FYI, The Illuminati were never mentioned by name in "Beauty and the Beast". The third-season villain, Gabriel (no last or first name given) obviously belonged to some sort of long-lived organization that had ties to criminal enterprises, since he and another member (a man named "Snow" who killed for a living) both had fancy gold-and-black-opal rings that were found to be hundreds of years old. But though the fans of the show came to refer to them as the Illuminati, the organization was never actually named onscreen; all that was given was that one of the rings was inscribed on the inside with one word, "Veritas". So I decided to shed a little bit of light (pun intended) on that mystery. Of course, there are still a few questions unanswered...

It'll be more than a few weeks in my timeline (which will be several months of RL time) before Vincent and Catherine themselves actually make an appearance in my saga. Maybe by then I'll have a link to a website that gives decently detailed synopses for all the episodes, particularly the third season ones, to share with fans so they can find out more about who these people are and everything else that Matt Bluestone is still in the dark about. And if anyone happens to find some good sites, send me the links, okay? I'll revise this Ramblings or write another one that will include them, so everyone can benefit from your perseverance.

That's all the questions I feel like answering outside of the stories themselves. "Mating Games Part 6: Clouds Gathering" will be coming soon, and will answer a few more questions that have been asked, when Goliath and Elisa emerge from their 'second honeymoon' to find all is not going quite as well with their other clan members as they had hoped…

Until then,

clear skies,

Kimberly T.


	4. Ramblings 4

_**Kimberly's Ramblings 4: Responding to "Ohmigod, You Killed Brenny!"**_

By Kimberly T. (email: kimbertow at yahoo dot com)

Well, these last few stories seem to have stirred up some controversy… My series now includes:

Stuff about the Praying Gargoyle that Greg Weisman hasn't said is canon.

The death of Brentwood, the poor clone who never seems to get a break in anybody's series.

A clan of gargoyles who survived not by hiding, but by flat-out _lying_ and deceiving men of the cloth… and the occasional murder.

A boatload of dead Quarrymen, most of them killed by gargoyles… and one in cold blood.

Angela being not all sugar-n-spice-n-everything-nice; being _prejudiced_, even.

People who dance and sing and rejoice at funerals.

What's funny is that what I consider the _really_ controversial stuff has so far barely been hinted at! But that's not what this Rambling is about; nope, you'll have to wait a few more stories for that stuff. Instead, bear with me while I ramble about the above topics, plus a bit more about Demona's tragic past and more background information—including some handy links at last!--on the show I'm doing an ongoing crossover with, _Beauty and the Beast_. And finally, some news about what I'll be writing next.

First, to respond to "**_Greg Weisman never said anything about there being a price for using the Praying Gargoyle!_**"

Nope, it's not firmly established canon that this particular Atlantean talisman demands a price from its user, a portion of the user's life-force, to forestall it from being used frivolously (by, f'rinstance, some thrill-seeking gargoyle who might use it to go exploring the heart of a volcano by just jumping right in.) The info about it being from ancient Atlantis, being able to regenerate itself over a 60-year span and about being made expressly for the protection of gargoyles are all declared canon, but not that one crucial detail. (Not yet, anyway!)

Frankly, I just decided not to wait any longer for Greg Weisman to dribble any more little bits of information about the statue's origins and uses, so I made up some guidelines that went with what little information he had supplied to fans (via the Station 8 "Ask Greg" archives), and posted it all in my "Getting Biblical" a few months before the Mating Games story that featured its use. If more dribbles of information are given out in later years and it turns out that I got a few things wrong, well, it won't be the first time I've violated canon. I really try not to, because I love the whole Gargoyles Universe and I really do try to respect Greg W's vision. But sometimes, canon just won't do for my series. Such as the 20-year breeding cycle, and waiting until 2007 for the next breeding season and 2008 for the next generation to be laid. Nope, sorry, that's too long to wait. And considering it's taken me this many years and stories to go a measly **_two months_** in my series' timeline, I think most of my readers would agree with me…

Now, to respond to "**_Why did you go and kill Brentwood off? I'd thought better of you than that_…"** (I'm still not sure whether to be annoyed at being judged like that, or pleased that my readers have such high expectations.)

Geez, poor Brentwood never gets a break, eh? In most of the fanfiction series that involve the clones at all, they're either slaughtered _en masse_ to show just how badass a particular villain is, or just one of them is killed (generally for the same reason), and when just one of them is killed it's usually Brentwood. But in almost all those cases, Brentwood's death is something he can't fight against; he's helpless, often even clueless, and a complete victim. At least in my 'verse, he _chose_ to go back to save his friends and clan, and he died while trying to save Delilah. To my eyes, that makes it a hero's death; still a tragedy, but not a senseless tragedy.

So why Brentwood, specifically? To tell the truth, it really bothered me that I was falling into stereotype, with him being killed off in so many other series. But sooner or later the Quarrymen were bound to get lucky and actually kill a gargoyle, and their most likely victim would be someone who had little experience in fighting at all; one of the clones. And of all the clones, Brentwood has the greatest speed in the air but the poorest fighting ability; no web-wing is a particularly good fighter in the air. If they move their arms, legs or wing-struts too much while in aerial combat, they lose their glide plane and start falling; their best bet is to either find a weapon they can wield one-handed with a minimum of arm movement (a gun would be a good weapon, once the wielder learned how to shoot accurately while holding the gun far out to the side), or do that _slash en passant_ move that Brentwood pulled on the Quarrymen.

In addition to their aerial limitations, once on the ground, web-wings tend to be less effective in combat than their free-winged brethren are; those wings are limber and highly pliable, so they can twist and turn this way and that, but they present a much wider target surface area for their opponent. A web-winged gargoyle on the ground, unarmed, facing multiple opponents who are armed… the poor guy was doomed from the moment he landed, but he was trying to save Delilah. And I promise all the Brentwood-lovers out there that he _will_ be missed; in my stories, no character who's been given a name dies without a darn good reason, and no one just dies and is forgotten by the next Tuesday. Actions have consequences, and people have memories, just as in real life.

Now we come to the gargoyles of Paris, and the deception that kept them alive for centuries. **_"How could they live like that; lying to holy men all the time? Gargoyles are supposed to be honest; didn't they feel incredibly guilty?"_**

Well, those people were between a rock and a hard place, pardon the pun. The bishop of Paris had their old home quarried for stone to build Notre Dame, among other buildings, and in that highly religious era—the Church was all-powerful back then, and the Popes could and did order kings to do their bidding—the gargoyles had three choices. They could either fight for their lives against people who considered them demons, a battle they were _guaranteed to lose by day_, or they could try to flee across the landscape to another mountain home—and there weren't any others within a night's travel, meaning they'd be vulnerable to humans for at least one day in transit—or they could go along with that priest's assertion that they were really "fearsome angels," which meant accepting the bishop's offer to dwell in the cathedral—one that they dared not refuse, considering that the bishop had sent soldiers to back up his "invitation". The gargoyles didn't come up with the story that they were angels, but once it had been suggested, their best shot at survival was to take advantage of it.

(Say, why didn't I get any letters about this controversy regarding the London Clan, back when I wrote "Revelations of the Labyrinth Part 4: Guests and Pasts"? They had pretty much the same deal, after Merlin transformed them. What, did the pretty feathered wings make it okay for them to deceive the general populace?)

Regarding the Paris Clan, I was also informed that** "_What was done to Father Jerome was more than wrong; it was blasphemy_." **

(As a non-Catholic, I'm not even going to touch that charge of blasphemy, okay?) To begin, one reader guessed semi-correctly, that Jerome's name was taken from the _Brother Cadfael_ historical mystery series by Ellis Peters; the Brother Jerome in that series is a toadying arse who never fails to set people's teeth on edge. But it's certainly not the same fellow; for one thing my story is set a few centuries later than the _Brother Cadfael_ series, and for another this Jerome was a priest, not a monk, and his last name was Canmore. Yep, he was a Hunter, or to be more accurate a younger brother to that generation's Hunter, who had sought to carry on his family's crusade against gargoyles from within the Church. C'mon, didn't anyone notice that I specifically said he had a Scottish accent?

Yes, Father Jerome was murdered by a gargoyle in cold blood, but I'll let you readers in on a secret; Jerome was just waiting for his older brother Robert to come back from hunting Demona in the countryside of Castile (now Spain), so the brothers could team up and wipe out a clan of gargoyles together. They'd missed a prior opportunity to do so when the London gargoyles had fled their city, having lost the clan's trail before finding their new den. But after hearing about the "fearsome angels" that guarded Notre Dame, Jerome figured his family had another opportunity to kill some of those wretched beasts. But first he had to turn the monks and priests against them; the Canmores didn't want to have to fight their way into a cathedral, and risk the Church _excommunicating_ them. (Back then, the power of the Church was such that excommunication would effectively make the family utter pariahs. No one would want to have anything to do with them, and such utter lack of cooperation would really hamper their work of killing gargoyles.) So in light of that news, perhaps Andrew's cold-blooded suffocation of Jerome could be viewed not so much as murder as a pre-emptive strike?

Which brings us to other death, the one that has earned me the most outraged emails to date: the death of the seventh Quarryman, the one who had been shot by Delilah after killing Brentwood but hadn't immediately died from his wounds. Yes, the one who was "finished off" afterwards. To date, I've had eleven emails and reviews asking in varying tones of outrage, **"_How could they do that?_"**

In our modern world, even in times of war it's considered utterly wrong to "finish off" the wounded soldiers of the enemy. That wasn't the case back at old Wyvern; back in medieval times, using scarce food and healing resources on a wounded enemy meant denying those same resources to a comrade in need. Also, a quick death was considered more merciful than a lingering death at the hands of those primitive chirurgeons (doctors) who had no clue about the importance of good hygiene and often still practiced 'bleeding' their patients, and who killed far, far more patients than they saved. It used to be the grim duty of field commanders to decide which of their own wounded men would be brought back from the battlefield alive, and which would be given the mercy blow. But today, with modern medicine and doctors saving far more people than they kill, such mercy killings are officially banned, even for wounded enemy soldiers.

But do remember that the Quarryman had been one of the group that had just beaten Brentwood to death. And now that Malibu and Dana had brought him through the secret entrance, if they took him alive to the main chambers of the Labyrinth for doctoring, he'd know where the gargoyles and their allies lived; their greatest secret and greatest vulnerability. (Everyone in the Labyrinth could be easily slaughtered in a mass drowning, by a sadistic plumber who knew just which city water main to rupture.) One person had motivation to kill from revenge; the other had motivation to kill from the need to protect others. Who actually struck the blow? That's between Malibu and Dana.

Look, most of my readers know that I'm career military. I regularly recite the Sailor's Creed, which frankly is a lot more patriotic than the Pledge of Allegiance (and doesn't specifically mention God by name, so there's none of that particular controversy.) I can also recite the Code of Conduct, which deals specifically with behavior in times of war. When you join the military, you have to accept the chance that you just might be shot at someday… and you just might wind up shooting at someone else. When it comes to war, General George S. Patton said it best: "The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his."

I am unapologetically on the side of Survival, and sometimes, just _sometimes_ that means being Practical rather than Noble. And that mindset comes out in my stories from time to time. Even back in "Trick or Treat", Goliath spared a few moments to think about how, back in the Middle Ages, the Quarrymen would have been killed just as the Vikings who attacked their castle back then were killed. The gargoyles back then were not in the habit of letting enemies go to fight another day; not when they knew all too well how vulnerable they are during the day. Hudson even recited some of the clan's gorier battles for the New Orleans Clan's chronicler! It was only in modern times, after Elisa specifically asked them to do so, that they began using strictly non-lethal methods against their foes.

And now, to forestall the shouts of outrage and condemnations that would otherwise be sure to arise from the last few paragraphs:

Since I'm in the military and in favor of killing when necessary, does that mean that I _want_ to go out and shoot people? _Abso-damn-lutely **not**_. 99 of the people who join the military would rather not be shot at **_or_** shoot anybody. Being trained on how to use a gun doesn't make a person a cold-blooded killer, any more than being taught how to use a telephone makes a person an obscene caller or "crank-yanker". It's the _attitude_, not the skill set.

Does that mean that my gargoyles are all cold-blooded killers? Again, **_no_**. It means they're **_people_**. I don't see the gargoyles as inherently more noble creatures, without flaws, sent to show all us poor humans the errors of our ways. I see them as _people_, with both good and bad in them, and daily having to choose between the good and bad, just as most of us do. For the most part, my characters are good people; they know what's right and they try to do the right thing. But they don't always do so; sometimes they make mistakes, and sometimes they give in to expedience or temptation. Are there any readers out there who can righteously say they've never done either? …Didn't think so. My gargoyles have flaws because they're people, but most of them struggle against those flaws, because they're good people.

Which brings us around to the subject of Angela. **_"Your Angela is drifting away from canon,"_** which means, as near as I could tell from the rest of the complaint, that she's suddenly not all sweetness-n-light anymore. Dear me, she's even a little _prejudiced;_ harboring suspicions and distrust against doctors, against the clones, and against females who openly flirt with males and flaunt their attributes. But she's still a good person; she just doesn't think through all her reactions sometimes.

Remember back in "Flesh and Stone", when Angela was far more excited than Broadway was about Hudson being his biological father? That came from the way she was raised. Raised by humans, who place an extremely high value on biological ties rather than clan ties. Humans who also imparted to their children the idea that only shameless town _prostitutes_, who earn their living on their backs, ever try to tempt men with provocative dress and even more provocative actions; **_good_** girls certainly never act like that, at least not in public. (Yes, that unconscious attitude came mostly from the Princess, because medieval noblewomen were held to an even higher standard than country girls; the men in charge of them didn't want their girls running loose and possibly breeding bastards that would spoil the lineage. Sure, it was okay for the men to do so, but they could always just deny they'd ever fooled around; it's a lot harder for a pregnant woman to do the same. Most anthropologists agree that male chauvinism and the whole idea of women being chaste before marriage, and belonging exclusively to their husbands afterwards, sprang from crude and largely ineffective efforts at population control.)

As for Angela's suspicion of doctors in general and prejudice against the clones, it all springs from her raw hatred of Dr. Sevarius. Remember that in her first encounter with that mad scientist who calls himself a doctor—her first encounter with even the word "doctor"; the term used back in medieval times was _chirurgeon_—she was imprisoned, treated like a lab specimen and finally damn near drowned; if Goliath had been just a few seconds later in his rescue, she would surely have died in Loch Ness. Who can blame her for hating Sevarius after that, or for being suspicious of any stranger who calls himself or herself a "doctor"? And she sees the mutates as fellow _victims_ of Sevarius, just as she and Nessie were, but the clones that he _created _are another matter. In addition to that, there's her dislike of Delilah specifically, but that's all tied up in a complex Freudian knot that I'm not even going to try to untangle here; it would take far too long.

If Angela really stopped to think about her prejudices, she would likely be able to overcome them and treat a few people better, at least as well as they deserve… but first she's got to really think about it, to analyze her reactions and figure out her subconscious reasons for them. And introspection is not something Angela is at all fond of doing, for reasons that will become apparent later on in my series.

So, Angela has a few flaws, just like Broadway who eats too much and Lexington with his secret porn collection and… oops, that last bit just slipped out! Anyway, Angela has some flaws she needs to work on, and that's all that needs saying right now.

"**_That just seemed wrong, the New Orleans Clan celebrating like that after Brentwood's funeral. How could they be so callous about the Manhattan Clan's feelings?"_**

Ah, jazz funerals… Louis Armstrong reportedly once responded to a question about jazz with, "If you gotta ask the question, you ain't never gonna understand the answer." But I'm going to try to explain anyway. Or rather, I'll let these websites explain for me: the websites ( ) explain the origins of the jazz funeral. This uniquely New Orleans custom has survived to modern times, as the story on this website illustrates: And even in the wake of Hurricane Katrina's utter devastation of New Orleans, the custom persists, as shown by this recent CNN online article: A lot of people, including me, saw this latest event as a sign that the spirit of the Big Easy is still alive, and New Orleans will come back in all its glory someday. (And if you're viewing this at fanfiction-net where the links are always cut out, just google on "jazz funeral" and you'll learn a lot.)

One person also asked how the clan's custom had started at all, since the New Orleans Clan originally came from France, while the jazz funeral arose from African traditions. The Dubois family that came to America did not keep slaves; after allying themselves with another sentient race and accepting gargoyles as equals, there was no way they could participate in the mass pretense perpetrated by most of the South that blacks were an inferior species. But their money came from agriculture, and they needed help to tend their fields; the gargoyles helped out where they could, but even together they were simply too few to do everything needed to maintain the crops. So they took on sharecroppers. Some of their sharecroppers were _Cajuns_; French settlers who had been forced out of Acadia (now eastern Canada) back in the 1750's when the British took it over. Other sharecroppers were freed blacks who had been emancipated by their former masters. Each man or woman had to be carefully considered and screened before hiring, since the Dubois family had a big secret that they wanted to _keep_ secret. And as a result of that screening and their more open-minded attitude, all the estate's sharecroppers, both white and black, were treated a damn sight better than most sharecroppers were treated not just in those days but for a full century afterwards; intermarriages began almost immediately, and today most of the humans of the clan are _mulatto_, the old term for mixed-blood. Anyway, those freed blacks brought with them customs from Africa that had been refined and changed over their years in America, including the idea of 'a proper sendoff' for the dead; a jazz funeral.

Out of all the cultural differences between the New Orleans Clan and the Manhattan Clan, the jazz funeral is the one that might have started a serious fight. It's such an integral part of the New Orleans Clan's culture that over half of them didn't even think that the new clan might not have the same attitude and custom. Those who did consider it, simply assumed that somebody else had informed the new clan of their custom during the past week that they'd been there visiting. But it ended up that the only one who had any forewarning at all of what was coming was Hudson, when talking to Stephen and Robert while Goliath was being hosed off and scrubbed down. And only because he was curious as to exactly why Stephen wanted to know what Brentwood's favorite song was.

Fortunately for inter-clan relations, Hudson is the gargoyle who was actually closest to Brentwood and feels the greatest grief for his loss; while the others truly wish Brentwood was still alive and regret not getting to know him better before his death, their sadness is the sort that most people would feel upon hearing of the death of a neighbor who'd only recently moved onto the block. There isn't the same sort of hole in their lives that the death of a loved one or even well-liked one would leave, and in truth most of them really feel more guilty than grief-stricken; guilty that they didn't try to get to know Brentwood better before he died. While it's ordinarily all too easy for grief to be transmuted to rage when the grieving party feels that others aren't appreciating his/her pain, in this case Hudson had forewarning and enough time, and the sort of wisdom that comes with great age and outliving many others, to accept the concept of a jazz funeral before the music started playing. And the rest were greatly bothered by what was happening, but more bewildered than outraged. The general unvoiced attitude as they headed back to the mansion, surrounded by people who were dancing and playing music and singing at the top of their lungs, was '_These people are even weirder than I thought_…'

"**_What did Demona really have to do with the destruction of the Paris Clan? Were there any survivors of the massacre after all? And does Demona know about the New Orleans Clan too?_**"

As I've said a few times already, the story the Paris Clan's demise and Demona's role in it can be found in the TGS story "From the Heart"; I really made only two minor changes in it, one of them solely due to the different breeding cycles in my 'verse. But for those folks who are apparently unwilling to read a darn good story in order to glean the appropriate scenes from it:

In July of 1793, Demona came to Paris to discover the Paris Clan in dire straits, due to the French Revolution and the Terror perpetrated by Robespierre and others. After an aborted slaughter shortly before she'd arrived that had killed over a dozen members of the clan, the remaining fifty gargoyles had been evacuated to an abandoned farmstead outside Paris, though that place turned out to be no safer than Notre Dame once the general populace found out they were there. Some members of the clan wanted to flee further into the countryside but their leader, Valjean, stubbornly refused to utterly abandon Notre Dame, let alone leave Paris entirely; it had been the clan's home for centuries.

Valjean and another gargoyle named Elan told Demona a little about the Praying Gargoyle, and how a magic-user was needed in order to use it to protect the clan, but Demona didn't volunteer her services at the time; she was worried that, despite their need of a sorcerer or sorceress right them, they would look down on her magical training just as the gargoyles of old Wyvern had done. (After centuries of living alone, Demona couldn't bare the thought of losing yet another clan, this time to prejudice against magic.) She went off to think for a while and with tragic timing, she decided just before dawn that she'd tell the clan her secret after all, but awoke the next night to find they had already been slaughtered in their stone sleep, Valjean and a few others at Notre Dame and the rest at the farmhouse outside of Paris. She'd hesitated, and lost all once more.

I integrated that story into my universe with just a few minor changes, the biggest being that instead of having eggs in the rookery, in 1793 the clan had young hatchlings scampering about. Those hatchlings had been evacuated to the farmstead shortly before Demona arrived in Paris. The farmhouse had been set on fire after the gargoyles there had been smashed, and was still blazing when Demona came back; she stayed only long enough to see the pieces of broken gargoyles scattered everywhere, so much like what had happened at Wyvern centuries ago… she assumed that all had been slaughtered, and left screaming for vengeance against the entire human race. She didn't know that the hatchlings had been taken down into the farmstead's root cellar before dawn, and so had survived both the smashing attacks and the fire afterward. A few hours before dawn, long after Demona had departed, the sole remaining rookery keeper cautiously brought her charges out of the root cellar and hurried them away, into the forest nearby. From there, they… ah, but that's another story.

The other minor change is that Valjean also mentioned to Demona that a splinter clan had left Paris over twenty years ago to settle in the New World, in a place called New Orleans. Sneaking back into Notre Dame after leaving the farmhouse, she found the clan's chronicles, and read through them to learn not only how to use the Praying Gargoyle, but where the splinter clan could be located. But due to not exactly being free to buy passage aboard ships and wagon trains, it took Demona over seven years to make her way from Paris to New Orleans. By that time, the house that had been described so well in the letters she'd found was no longer home to gargoyles; all she found was gravel, old talon-marks and other signs that they had once been there. She assumed that the clan there had been betrayed by humans and slaughtered as well, and left the city behind, filled with even more hatred for humanity… unaware that the clan had simply moved farther out into the countryside (having grown much more cautious after receiving news of their parent clan's destruction), and weren't patrolling in town that weekend because they were all, humans and gargoyles together, dancing the nights away at a _fais do-do_ deep in the bayou to celebrate a wedding. Basic truth, folks; one of Demona's biggest problems is bad timing.

"**_That was Vincent of 'Beauty and the Beast' who showed up to keep Macbeth company, wasn't it_?"**

Yes indeed, that was Vincent, and his Father with him for the introductions. But for those of you who are still wondering what "Beauty and the Beast" is all about, I finally have some good links for you! "Songs of the Bluebird" at is a website devoted to almost entirely to "Beauty and the Beast", with not only fanfic and fanart and links to fan clubs, but a decent episode guide at (And if you're reading this at fanfiction-net, the main website can be found at: www dot beautyandthebeast-tv dot com slash bluebird slash songs dot html. Check out the heading "The Romantic Drama," and "the Bluebird Guide" is the best episode guide to look through.) Readers who go to the episode guide and read about the events of the third season, should have little trouble integrating the events depicted there with Matt's description of events in my story "Unsolved Mystery, Redux."

Honestly, when I started writing "Keeping Watch" I hadn't expected any of the people from "Beauty and the Beast" to make an actual appearance; I'd been figuring that they'd cautiously stay in the shadows for a few more months, until the Labyrinth… ah, but that would be saying too much. Anyway, I was almost halfway through the first draft of the story that the Macbeth in my head was urging me to write, when Vincent quietly mentioned that he'd like to pay his respects to the fallen warrior too.

Astute readers have already guessed by now which two members of the Labyrinth—three, if Father Sullivan is counted as well--are familiar with the subterranean community Vincent dwells in; let's just call it "Below", since that was the term used most often in the old TV show. But what even those astute readers don't know is that one of the gargoyle clones is also aware of the other community. See, one night shortly before the events of "Flesh and Stone", Malibu was chasing a particularly fat and tasty-looking rat clear out of the common tunnels used by the Labyrinth, until it ran into territory that happens to be claimed by those who dwell Below. After catching the rat and snapping its neck, he noticed the scent of another human nearby, and stumbled upon one of their hidden sentries just as the poor frightened lad was banging out a call for help on the pipes that they use for long-distance communication. Hearing the alarm, Vincent came charging onto the scene, but stopped flat-footed at the sight of Malibu cautiously holding his fresh-killed rat out to the sentry, trying to entice the lad to be friends with a gift of food!

Some basic information was exchanged and a tentative friendship was formed that night, but Vincent urged Malibu to tell no one about the other community living Below, not even his brothers and sister. Below depends on secrecy even more than the Labyrinth does for its survival, or at least the survival of one of its people; Vincent's wife Catherine. The Labyrinth dwellers have good reason to be worried about the Quarrymen, but they have nothing to fear from the Illuminati. But as Xanatos explained to Matt in "Unsolved Mystery, Redux", Catherine Chandler is still wanted by the Illuminati for questioning—and it would not be polite questioning—about a certain black book with some very damaging information in it. And the Illuminati have operatives everywhere, even in the police departments and the FBI; no stranger can be trusted.

Malibu still doesn't quite understand what the Illuminati are, but even at his current childlike stage he knows how to keep a promise, and keep a secret. So far, he's told no one at home about the other community; he didn't even tell his best buddy Brentwood. But from both conversations with Malibu and from their own contacts, Vincent and the others in his community know about the mutates and cloned gargoyles that live in the Labyrinth.

When Father Sullivan, dropping off some supplies that Tuesday morning, told the Below community about Monday night's battle and tragedy, most of the Below residents shook their heads, murmured in helpless sympathy and went back to what they'd been doing. But later in the day, two morbidly curious little boys went up to the site of the tragedy to see if there were any gargoyle remains left; boys do that sort of thing sometimes. And an hour later, those two boys came tearing back saying excitedly that there was a stranger sitting up there, someone they'd never seen before, but he'd known they were from Below and had mentioned "the Father" (the rather patriarchal title that Jacob Wells has been given.) Worried that their secrecy might have been compromised somehow, Vincent and his Father went up Topside to get a look at this stranger, to see if he was someone they knew after all. The rest is in the story.

Sheez, this thing has gone on for a full ten pages already; that's about enough rambling for now! Just one more bit of news: the "Mating Games" and "Meanwhile, Back in New York" story arcs are going to go on a brief hiatus, so I can work on some other stories that I promised myself I would get out by the end of the year. But rest assured, they will continue! There's so much more to tell…

Clear skies,

Kimberly


	5. Ramblings 5

_**Kimberly's Ramblings 5: Looking Behind the Cliché**_

By Kimberly T. email: kimbertow at yahoo dot com

I did a few more drabbles of the characters in my saga for the "Passing Glances" series, and it finally occurred to me why that one ex-fan said he'd stopped reading my works because I'd become "too cliché". Because at first glance, it probably looks like I've gone for the "everybody falls in love and gets mated and lives happily ever after" route.

After all, before posting "Moments of Silence" I not only had Elisa and Goliath happily mated, but declared more-or-less engagements for Angela and Broadway, Lexington and Rebecca, and even the elderly couple Hudson and Ursula. And the latter two couples had paired up after only a few nights together!

That's the main point of this Rambling; in my series (in which it's acknowledged that gargoyle biology necessitates some cultural differences besides simply not holding any day jobs; differences that not all humans will understand at first), sometimes mating and breeding don't have much to do with love and lasting relationships. In that aspect, they're not unlike cultures in our RL world that still practice arranged marriages; everyone's happy when love and marriage **_do_** coincide, but they don't always do so.

Here are the latest drabbles I've posted to "Passing Glances":

**Lexington  
**  
His clone is dead, and Lexington's biggest regret is that he never got to know Brentwood as a gargoyle in his own right. But Rebecca is understanding, and quick to comfort him.

Choosing Rebecca is the best decision he ever made. They're so much alike, they were becoming friends even before he discovered she's LadyHawke! And she's cute, too; she may not like her beak, but he thinks it's perfect.

They'll be good mates for each other, he's sure of it. He's not having any second thoughts.

…Well, maybe one or two, but he's not going to change his decision.

**Rebecca  
**  
Poor Lex, to first have a 'copy' made of himself, then lose the clone before getting to know him! Like losing a rookery brother that you didn't know you had until too late. At least Rebecca thinks it might be like that. So she hugs Lexington and listens to his mutterings, and strokes his scalp and brow ridges. She hopes he'll be happy again by the mating ceremony.

They'll be mated soon! She'll have a mate all to herself, a wonderful male… And to make it perfect, her favorite brother will go to Manhattan with her! She's just so _happy_…

**Ursula  
**  
Hudson is a dear fellow, a fine warrior. He'll be a good, comfortable companion to grow older with, but he's still lively enough to fly with her in next year's breeding season and sire the third egg she hopes to bear.

And Goliath is eloquent about how his clan will need a rookery keeper; how much they will need her skills and wisdom in Manhattan.

But New Orleans is her Home! How can she leave where she was hatched, where she's raised generations of hatchlings?

But there might be one more incentive to go to Manhattan… if her plan works…

**oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo00oo**

Did everyone notice that in all three of those drabbles, I never once used the word "love"?

Gargoyles take their breeding seasons very seriously. They have to; those seasons come so infrequently, only once every 25 years (every 20 years in Greg W.'s canon, which isn't much better), that their species' birth rate often falls far behind the death rate.

**_That_** is the real reason why gargoyles are so rare, why those clans that used to exist all over the world (according to Goliath in "The Green") have dwindled to a few pockets of survivors here and there. Even if they weren't slaughtered in a conflict with humans, sometimes clans lost enough breeding-age members between seasons, due to hunting accidents or disease or whatever, that their gene pool gradually dwindled below sustainable levels, and excessive inbreeding brought up dangerous recessive genes that caused hatchlings to die (assuming their eggs hatched at all) before they could breed. Clans with luck that bad just died out, without ever even encountering humans.

And the gargoyles **_know_** that this… inherent flaw/deficiency in their reproductive cycle is the real reason they're teetering on the verge of extinction; the reason why Goliath told Grandmother in "Heritage", "We survive; we do not thrive."

So as I said, gargoyles take their breeding season very seriously. Every female who's capable of bearing an egg during the season is expected to do so, whether or not she has chosen a mate to spend all her nights with.

There isn't quite as much intense pressure on males, because due to some other quirk in their reproductive process, perhaps the average temperature in their rookeries as the eggs incubate, the male-to-female ratio for gargoyle hatchings is about 55-45, instead of the 50-50 ratio for most other creatures; there are usually some excess males in a breeding season. (Yes, the New Orleans Clan's second-youngest generation is a major exception to that rule, and more than one gargoyle has commented on it.) And of course, as is true for most two-gendered species in existence, one male can fertilize more than one female if need be.

But yes, if there's an unmated male around who can fertilize an unmated female when the breeding season comes along, he's generally expected to damn well contribute to the gene pool. Unless… well, we'll talk about the exceptions (and ensuing plot points) on a later date. For the moment, understand that's the real reason why poor Robert, a homosexual gargoyle in the New Orleans Clan, is regarded with such disapproval by so many members even though New Orleans itself is generally accepting of the gay lifestyle (there are even all-gay krewes in existence who parade proudly during Mardi Gras.) There are unmated females in his clan, but he just can't get it up for any of them. And some folks, those anxiously eyeing the calendar for next year on which the anticipated Breeding Moon is already circled in bright red, are thinking he's just not trying hard enough…

And now, back to the engaged couples. First, Hudson and Ursula. They like each other; they're comfortable with each other. But they're not in love with each other. These two elders know that love, true love and a truly loving relationship, takes TIME to fully develop; sometimes just a few months, sometimes years, but far more than just a few days.

But as Ursula reflects on in the above drabble, they each recognize that the other is a good person, with admirable qualities. They like each other. And each other them has loved and lost a mate before, not to mention witnessed other generations of gargoyles falling in love, mating, breeding, and finally figuring out what true love really is and whether or not they actually love their mates.

Sometimes age really does bring wisdom; learning how to truly put the other person first in a relationship, and how to smooth out rough edges instead of aggravating them with selfishness or old emotional baggage until the relationship falls apart. Hudson and Ursula know that even if what they have together never completely develops into love, they can be good companions to each other in their remaining years.

If Ursula is one of the lucky females to get the breeding fever three times instead of only twice (about half of all gargoyle females will be fertile for three breeding seasons), Hudson is still spry enough to go on a mating flight with her and contribute to the gene pool again. That's another incentive for them to become mates as well as companions, besides the fact that each still fondly remembers how much fun sex can be and would like to experience it again.

The only real stumbling block to their relationship is resolving just where they're going to perch together for the rest of their nights. Mind you, that's a bloody big block to surmount, and it may end up being a deal-breaker…

Then there's Lex and Rebecca. Lex is from a gargoyle clan that had an alliance with the humans in their territory but still mostly kept to themselves and their own ways, though they put on clothes to make the neighbors happy. Lex has never read a Harlequin Romance novel. Lex is not in love with Rebecca, and he knows it. But he knows what's expected of him, come the next breeding season; to take a female mate from among the available ladies. And he and Rebecca are already friends, good friends; they had an online relationship and learned some of their mutual likes and dislikes even before meeting face-to-face and discovering who Braveheart and LadyHawke really are!

He likes her a lot, more than any other female he's ever met, certainly more than any of the other available rookery sisters. He cares about her, too; he can really sympathize with a lot of her issues, particularly with being the smallest of her generation. So he picked her to court, figuring that they're already good friends, which is a good start to a mated relationship, and hopefully they'll fall in love later on.

Lex asked Rebecca to choose him for mating with after just a few nights together, because he knows that his clan will have to return to Manhattan soon. He knows himself well enough to know he wasn't apt to suddenly change his mind and start liking one of those other New Orleans females more than his good buddy LadyHawke, so why waste time? Besides, he's like the average teenager in that he's eager to find out if sex is really as much fun as everyone says it is.

Rebecca, on the other hand… Rebecca has read Harlequin Romance novels. She's grown up side-by-side with humans and their fairy tales about Cinderella and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty. In other words, she has been subconsciously programmed to believe in love at first sight and that Romance is the Most Important Thing in the World and that people who fall in love will always live happily ever after.

If Rebecca had been born a human girl instead of hatched a gargoyle and gone to a conventional public school, she would likely have already lost her virginity, to the first boy who said that he loved her and thought she was pretty and they would always be together. She would likely have also had her heart broken by that same boy after finding out that he just said all that so he could get in her panties, and he's been telling all his buddies what an easy lay she is. So all things considered, she's pretty lucky that she was hatched a gargoyle instead, with rookery brothers who knew better than to try anything like that. (They're all raised on the same estate by the same rookery keepers and know they'll probably be seeing each other every night for the rest of their lives, so unlike in most public schools, there would be no easy walking away from the consequences of such irresponsible actions.)

Rebecca knows what's expected of her next breeding season, too, and knows that if she didn't have a male of her own for breeding with by then, she'd have to breed with a male who was already mated to someone else. To have sex with a male for an hour or two of each night of the Breeding Moon, knowing that afterwards, he'd go back to his true mate and she'd have only the clan's support while she was egg-heavy. Very few females would willingly choose such a fate; pregnancy is no more fun for female gargoyles than it is for human females, and the support of a caring mate can do a lot to relieve the burden of backaches and cravings and etc. and etc. But until they'd received word of another clan discovered up in New York, that's just what Rebecca thought was going to happen to her.

Given that and given the fact that she thinks she's not pretty, due to her beak (actually due to her sister Marie, but that's another issue), it shouldn't surprise anyone that she stowed away for the trip up to New York to make contact with the clan up there. She figured that her best and probably only chance of getting a mate for herself, was to catch an unmated male and get him to choose her, before the rest of her so-much-prettier sisters saw him or he saw them.

When she first saw Brooklyn, she figured he would be the perfect male for her; he wouldn't ever make fun of her beak, not when he had one of his own! And when she actually got to talking with him, and found out he was a decent male with manners and courage and a working brain to go with that studly physique… #**Instant Infatuation**.# So instant that even she knew it wasn't love, not just yet, but she was sure it would bloom into love fairly soon, and proceeded to express her adoration for Brooklyn every chance she got. (Which made Brooklyn decidedly uneasy, until he arrived in New Orleans and met the other desperate females; then he got downright scared. ;-)

When Rebecca's worst fears were realized and Brooklyn gave signs of favoring one or two of her sisters over her, she was utterly crushed… until she started talking with Lexington. True and deep love may take a lot of time, but real friendship can spring up pretty fast indeed, and the two of them became friends even before they discovered that they had already met online. And when that revelation unfolded… why, it must be Fate! It was a sign that she and Lexington were meant to be together!

Rebecca thinks she and Lexington are already deeply in love, when really they're just deeply in **_like_.** And she thinks the two of them will be happy together forever, when really…

Well, you'll all see soon enough. After I finish those stories I'm writing for Christine Morgan's series, since I want to get them done and posted before she unveils the grand finale and declares an end to her saga.

After those five stories are posted, I'll resume work on the next story in my "Life Goes On" saga; right now the working title is "Weird Luck." In the meantime, I hope you're enjoying the "Passing Glances"! There are a few more characters left to look in on…

**P.S.** I've never had to add to a specific Rambling before, but all the email from dismayed fans that I've received in the last 48 hours has persuaded me to do so.

No, I'm not one of those extremely cynical folks who thinks that "Love" is just a fairy tale, and that all my characters are doomed to breakups and divorce (or dismating) and lives of quiet desperation like we all see every day in RL. For one thing, I'm happily married myself, and I love my husband more now than when we were first married eleven years ago.

Since I evidently rambled a bit too much earlier and my main point was lost in all the background info, here it is again, short and sweet:

Real Love, not just affection or infatuation, takes TIME to develop. Sometimes just a few months, but more often a few years of learning each other's quirks and caring for each other.

In "Mating Games", the single gargoyles in my series simply do not have that kind of time, and they know it. So they're flailing about trying to make connections as fast as they can, and hoping for the best; hoping that later on the couples they make will come to truly love each other.

Are they guessing right? Who will find True Love… and who will have their heart broken? ((wicked grin)) Wait and see, folks; wait and see…

Clear skies,

Kimberly T.


	6. Ramblings 6

**Kimberly's Ramblings 6: It Ain't Just a River in Egypt**

By Kimberly T. (email: kimbertow AT yahoo etc.)

Greetings! Herein you'll find responses to the most commonly asked questions and comments from readers of Mating Games #9 ("Bad Moves"), 10 ("While You Were Gone") and 11 ("Changing the Rules"), Meanwhile, Back in New York #9 ("Housing Issues"), and In Ishimura #3 ("Secrets and Surprises")

Actually, I won't be responding to the most common question/comment I've received since posting "Changing the Rules". Seriously, almost every email I received for the first week after posting that story contained something along the lines of "**How could Rebecca be so suddenly accepting of Lex and Robert?! I would have (**_**insert favorite form of violence here**_**) them both**!" But I believe that the story immediately following that one, "Household of Three", adequately explained Rebecca's emotional state and her motivations to accept the ménage a trois.

**Who were those time-traveling gargoyles that appeared in the bayou?**

All I'm going to say about them right now is that they're not going to appear again any time soon. Which will probably be a relief to many readers; I had several people who not only _didn't _want to know any more about them, they were just about begging me not to bring them back, because they're against Time-Dancing on general principles. I can understand why, too. The idea that the future is as set in stone as the past, and any actions that you do to try to change foretold events will ultimately only fulfill them, leaves a sour taste in my mouth too.

I admittedly have a sort of "Back to the Future" view of time traveling; those of you who've seen the movie trilogy will know what I'm talking about. In brief, a change in the past can cause a new timeline to branch off from the original timeline, to result in two or more different dimensions/timelines running parallel—or diverging even further, as small changes lead to more changes. And the Phoenix Gate can slide someone up and down a particular timeline, but it's not designed to jump to another timeline after the crucial branch-off point.

**Why was Angela acting like that towards Hudson?** Referring to the way she shouted at him and flared her wings, like her elder had suddenly turned into a physical threat to her, when he told her to go tell Benedict more about the Avalon Clan in "Bad Moves."

All I'm going to say here is that Angela is in denial, and has been for a long time now. The next Mating Games story will reveal all.

**Did the gargoyle Benedict die a natural death, or was he murdered?**

Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy folks, but he died of natural causes; a heart attack caused by a cholesterol-clogged coronary artery finally clogging completely shut. It happens. In fact, Benedict had known he was at risk for a heart attack, had been briefed by Guilliame on the risks and the warning signs, but denied that the pain he was feeling was actually his heart muscle screaming for oxygen and slowly dying; he told himself it was just a severely upset stomach. That happens, too. Most heart attack victims are in denial, until it's too late.

**What was up with the Marsden house? Why was Xanatos so horrified?**

The Marsden house was a manifestation of a different form of denial; conscious and deliberate denial to others. In this case, denying those of Fey blood entrance into the house, and/or any use of their powers while inside.

Anyone who watched "The Mirror", "Avalon, Part 3", "Ill Met by Moonlight" and "The Gathering, Part 2" knows that iron is deadly to the Fey; it's their kryptonite. If they're bound by it, they're powerless; if a bit gets stuck inside them, they're poisoned. If they hear iron being struck, such as a small iron bell being rung, they're in as much pain as you or I would be in, if staked out only three feet away from a 747 jet engine being revved up to full power… and the iron cowbells inside and outside the Marsden house were rung regularly for many years. The iron crosses mounted all over were effective anti-Fey barriers because of the iron, not for the cross symbols, but one must recall that Quentin Marsden was a Lutheran pastor. And it shouldn't need saying that the inside of the house was similarly decorated; iron fixtures and decorations everywhere.

From the questions and comments I received, what puzzled most people were the plants in the window boxes. I haven't mentioned those particular herbs for a long time, not since the conversation between Fox and her father Halcyon Renard in the first installment of "The Times, They Are a-Changin'…" For the windowboxes, I dipped into my knowledge of old fairy and folk tales. In centuries past, people believed the Fey folk were everywhere… and they did _**not **_consider that good news. Even the Fey who weren't natural tricksters, prone to teasing and playing pranks on hapless humans just for the fun of it, were feared and guarded against. (And with good reason. The Fey didn't consider the humans as equal beings worthy of respect, any more than the humans considered the oxen in their farmyards and deer in the forest as equal beings. Sure, some Fey might be fond of a particular few of them, lots of people have pets, but…)

The old folk and fairy tales tell of several defenses against the Fey. Not all of them are actually effective; whistling and turning your clothes inside-out don't do anything except provide amusement for any Fey who happen to be in the vicinity. Making the sign of the cross, even if you're a staunch believer, just tells the Fey that your fingers are in working order. But some of the old defenses are effective indeed, such as cold iron. And certain plants, too. Oak isn't particularly dangerous to a Fey, but it's a little like lead for Superman's X-ray vision; they can't pass through it as easily as they can other substances. That's one of the reasons why oak is traditionally favored for doors, even when harder woods are available.

And while it wasn't quite spelled out in the old folk tales, I figure that the effects on the Fey of herbs such as sage, rosemary, thyme and St. John's wort can be summed up in one word: Allergies. Allergies like the worst ragweed pollen, and the worst poison ivy leaf secretions. Most Fey are susceptible, and will either go into debilitating sneezing fits if they get to close to sage or St. John's wort, or break out in a really bad, painfully itchy rash if they make the mistake of touching rosemary or thyme.

So why does the Xanatos family have these plants in windowboxes around their own home, particularly with a part-Fey child in the house? Because they don't trust Titania and Oberon to keep their word and not come for Alexander again, that's why. They planted the dangerous herbs in the windowboxes so they wouldn't have to put iron bars over every window, and their nanny, Anne Marsden, has been warned not to let little Alex or her daughter Bethany get too close to them. And the plantings of those herbs down in the arboretum are for harvesting later, to be dried, ground into a powder and loaded into breakable shells for biological warfare if necessary. (All the armories now have crossbows with iron bolts, too; enough crossbows overall to arm every gargoyle in the clan. And Fox has taught the humans in the castle how to fire the semi-automatic combat shotguns that are found in each armory cache, with plenty of iron buckshot.)

And why was Xanatos so horrified when he saw all the iron and herbs around and inside the house? Because he knows that with all those anti-Fey devices around, no Fey could survive there without having to bury his powers deep within a human form, such as Puck does when he turns into Owen Burnett. Any slight manifestation of Fey magic while inside that house would result in blinding pain and debilitation. And there was far too much of it there to be a coincidence; the Marsdens knew what they were doing. What they did made sure that no Fey, whether Phillip's father or any other interested party of that race, could go into the house and get the child. But what they also did was make sure that little Phillip Marsden would never, ever manifest even the slightest Fey ability. The first attempt, probably some little accidental spark of magic when he was an infant, would have resulted in such incredible pain that he'd never do it again. In effect, by denying Phillip access to his Fey heritage, they deliberately crippled him.

**Who was Phillip Marsden's father? And what really happened to him?**

A few folks have deduced the answer already, over the years since the Marsden family was first introduced back in "Unsolved Mysteries". I've put into the stories, either in large expository scenes or in small details inserted into other scenes, everything that's necessary for people to figure this one out. For those of you not fond of deductive reasoning, well, you'll just have to wait a while longer for the big revelation.

**Will you bring back Salome?**

Salome was the name of the part-gargoyle sex slave that Dr. Anton Sevarius had been secretly creating for his own use, as explained in flashbacks in "Housing Issues". I couldn't help noticing that it was mostly male readers asking this question…

No, there are no plans to bring back Salome. The embryo that would have become her, was destroyed when Demona smashed all the clones' accelerated maturation vats. Demona has expressly forbidden the manufacturing of any more clones, and since that night Dr. Sevarius has been watched too closely to try to secretly make any.

**He actually killed a little boy?** **Wow, your Thailog is **_**really**_**evil**. To which I have to say, "…Well, yeah! That's what he was meant to be!" Xanatos summed it up pretty well at the end of the episode "Double Jeopardy"; he created a monster.

Thailog was taught/programmed by Sevarius with Xanatos' "unique slant on things," if I recall the quote correctly. But he really got only part of Xanatos' knowledge and worldview. Xanatos has boasted that he's a self-made man, but that's just not true. His parents helped make him the man he became. For the first season and a good chunk of the second season, all we saw of Xanatos was the suavely ruthless businessman who always had a plot, a backup plan and a couple of contingencies brewing at the same time. Xanatos molded himself into that businessman, with a little help from the Illuminati and the Phoenix Gate. But before he was the businessman, he was the fisherman's son. Petros Xanatos taught his son David the hard worth ethic that's needed to become a successful businessman, and from both parents David received his moral teachings, learning the difference between right and wrong. Even if later in life David rebelled from the path his father had set for him, becoming a billionaire businessman as ruthless as he was ambitious, the lessons he learned as a child were still there in the back of his mind. Those moral lessons, and the love—tough love, I'm guessing in Petros' case, but still love—that came with them, are what let David come to genuinely love Fox, and love his son Alexander enough to fight to the death for him. But those moral lessons weren't part of what he had taught to Thailog, as the gargoyle was growing in a vat with his only regular company Dr. Sevarius—and I just can not picture that particular scientist developing any emotional attachments to his experiments. He was given a wealth of knowledge but no caring or affection, no moral teachings… I'm convinced that Thailog couldn't grow up to become anything other than a sociopath.

A sociopath is defined as "a person, as a psychopathic personality, whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience. Sociopaths are interested only in their personal needs and desires, without concern for the effects of their behavior on others." Sounds just like Thailog, doesn't it? But the definition is a little too simplistic, really. Sociopaths _are_ concerned with the effects of their behavior on other people that they happen to want something from, whether it's money or sex or a loyal stooge who will provide an alibi when needed. Once they have what they want, though, those other people are dropped like used tissues—and in some cases, left holding the bag for the sociopath's criminal misdeeds. And in some way _because_ they see other people as objects to use instead of people to care about, sociopaths are very skilled liars and manipulators. Most people have no idea that they've met and dealt with a sociopath until after he/she gets caught red-handed, if ever.

No one is quite sure how sociopaths come to be in real life, particularly since many of them come from apparently loving families. I've heard it suggested that sociopaths are the result of some sort of emotional disconnect from their family that happens when they're very young, with effects that last all their lives. I've also heard it suggested that sociopaths actually have abnormal brains, that some minute but crucial part is underdeveloped or malformed, and that they're biologically incapable of feeling true sympathy/empathy for anyone. (I don't believe that last theory has been backed up by scientific data, though that may just be for lack of identified sociopath brains to probe and dissect. As I said earlier, sociopaths are very skilled liars and very good at hiding their true natures, until they feel like gloating to someone.) Given how he was created—grown at over 100 times the natural growth process, with Xanaots' flawed programming—I think both causes contributed to Thailog becoming the sociopath he has proven himself, a monster beyond all redeeming or reforming.

Yep, I said it: the R-word. Redeeming, Reforming; both are termed 'the R-word' and scorned by fans who like their villains nice-n-nasty, even as the concepts are embraced by fans who prefer a kinder, gentler world than the one they see every day, with its worst moments broadcast on the nightly news. I've noticed over the years that it's usually only the, well, the fluffy-bunnyest fanfic on the gargoyles-fans fanfic archives has both Demona and Thailog being redeemed and reformed. Everyone else will have in mind redemption for either Demona or Thailog, but not both. (My mentor Christine Morgan's works are, as always, an exception to that rule. But when she reformed Demona, she turned Demona's son Jericho into a monster in her place. –shudder of revulsion-)

It should oughtta be pretty obvious by now which side of that particular fence I'm on. I think the Demona that we saw at the end of the second season could still be redeemed, though NOT easily, because it was proven in the episodes that she's still capable of love. Because before all the loss and betrayal and rage and bloody vengeance and centuries of war against humanity, she was a nice female who just wanted to help her clan and make sure that awful, nightmarish vision she was forced to see, wouldn't come true. But Thailog? All that there is to him, is what Xanatos and Sevarius put into him. He not only doesn't love, he _can't_ love. Love is as foreign a concept to him as color is to a man born blind. Thailog doesn't and can't truly care for anyone except himself. For him, there can be no redeeming.

To be perfectly fair to the characters, though, I will say that the boy's death, as it happened, was accidental. Thailog had been planning all along to kill the father as soon as he did as ordered--dead men tell no tales--but he'd been toying with the vague idea of dropping the kid off in Central Park afterwards, since a child's story about monsters would be far less likely to be believed and, having been kept in a canvas sack on the journey to the warehouse, he wouldn't be able to show others where he'd been held. Unfortunately, the boy just wouldn't stop whimpering and crying for his father, and Thailog soon lost patience with him and locked him in a soundproof container--soundproof because it was airproof. Oops. (Yes, this detail was drawn from a real kidnapping-murder case that happened over a decade ago.) So the death was accidental, but be assured that _Thailog feels no regret over it_; he saw it as one less loose end to tidy up. And yes, he would deliberately kill an innocent child if it served his purposes.

**Isn't Sakaki just asking too much of poor little Galena?**

Sakaki is asking a lot, but no, she's not asking too much. Sakaki is not asking Galena to deny that Cuarzo and Malaquita are her parents; not asking her to stop loving them. She's only asking that Galena stop _**saying**_ the equivalent of 'Mama' and 'Papa' in Japanese, when referring to them. Well, that and she's asking that Galena also turn to her and the other rookery keepers for affection, affection they're more than happy to bestow on her; Galena really is a sweet child.

At this stage, for Galena to refer to her parents by their proper names instead of parental titles isn't going to be that difficult a change. Yes, she's been calling them Mama and Papa for the last fourteen years, but she's equivalent in development to a seven-year-old child, and children are quick to adapt. She's also learning to call a whole lot of other things by new names, in the new language she's still learning; this is the best time for such a change to happen.

I have some personal experience, from my years in the military, on having to change how I refer to people, even close friends. I achieved the rank of first-class petty officer but was never promoted the next rank higher, which is chief petty officer. And when one of my buddies was promoted to chief, all of a sudden we weren't "Jeff" and "Kim" anymore, to give an example; we were "Chief" and "Petty Officer", and had to show the deference due to rank instead of teasing each other in the typical ribald fashion. Each time such promotion happened, the first couple of months were awkward, but eventually we got used to it. (In fact, just now I had to rack my brains to recall the first name of that particular chief.) So I figure that within a month, perhaps less, Galena will be saying 'Cuarzo-san' and 'Malaquita-san' without any hesitation or stumbling, even while asking her father for help in tying the obi on her new yukata.

Really, I'm amazed that no one has commented on poor Cuarzo. His is the much harder task. Sakaki first asked him, then flat-out ordered him to stop indulging and favoring little Galena, his daughter and his pride-n-joy for the last fourteen years, over the other hatchlings in the rookery. If Goliath had been present he would have told Sakaki to not be so harsh on the poor fellow, chewing him out for continually slipping up and indulging Galena instead of correcting her. Now that he thinks of Angela as his daughter, even Goliath has a hard time keeping himself from favoring her, and he never even met Angela until she was fully grown!

But Sakaki had a very good reason for asking what she did of both Cuarzo and Galena. For Galena, Sakaki spelled out all the reasons that a hatchling could understand, but I didn't see a need to show the conversation between Galena and Cuarzo and the explanation she gave him. Because the reasons that only an adult would understand had already been spelled out, by Ursula when talking to Angela in _Mating Games 9: Bad Moves_. (Guess I should have written the scene out, though, considering the lack of comments about Cuarzo.)

So, gargoyles have several very good reasons for not matching parents up with hatchlings. Besides the fact that clans with rookeries never, _ever_ have orphans, in the better clans, rookery keepers are NOT just 'failed warriors', gargoyles who aren't deemed proficient enough in combat. Rookery keepers are carefully selected for their patience, self-control and caring hearts, qualities that make good parents. (It's much easier to train a caring heart in how to discipline a child, than it is to train a strict person in how to care for them.) In the better clans, child abuse and child neglect are virtually unknown concepts, so far as the gargoyles themselves are concerned. They shake their heads in semi-disbelief over tales of such misery in human families, and think that it's really a pity that humans don't have rookeries for their children.

However, sometimes that matching-up of parents with offspring still happens. It's a biological urge, to protect and favor one's offspring; natural selection put the feature into most of the higher-functioning organisms on this planet. Mammals do it, birds do it, and even some reptiles do it; crocodile mothers will stay with, feed and guard their young from other predators. (Even some fish and amphibians do it, and curiously enough, when it occurs in the piscine world it's usually the papas that stay with and protect the young.)

At the very beginnings of gargoyle civilization, they made the decision to put their young into rookeries and raise them communally. But before they were civilized, the parental urge was encoded into their behavior. And when they're living side-by-side with humans, who place paramount importance on biological ties… attitudes can be catching, sometimes unconsciously, even when consciously guarding against them.

As was implied in "Yama's Path" and stated outright in my "Picture This: Ishimuran Clan", Kai and Sakaki know exactly who their offspring is; the male hatchling Happa. He looks very much like a younger version of Kai, with his coloring being a blending of Kai's gray-green and Sakaki's yellow skin. However, knowing the sound reasons for keeping rookeries, neither parent has openly acknowledge the bond, and in fact, they do their best to deny it and treat Happa as they would any other hatchling. Denial's a funny thing, though; sometimes it turns on you. And Sakaki was doing quite well at denying that of all the hatchlings in the rookery, Happa is her favorite… until Galena, in her innocence, rubbed it right in Sakaki's face.

The silent acknowledging of biological ties has happened in the New Orleans Clan, too. They've lived side-by-side with humans for centuries, and given how very different some gargoyle characteristics are--tails with knobs or spikes or that even split at the tip, brow ridges or other facial protrusions of a particular shape, unique hide colorations, etc--tracking particular characteristics down a bloodline is relatively easy. (If you'd like to do that yourself, remember that I don't usually describe every last detail of my characters in the stories themselves, unless it pertains to the scene they're in. I give full descriptions in my "Picture This: New Orleans Clan Characters" files, so the stories can focus on the characters' thoughts and actions instead.) Some clan members are aware of parentage and/or descendants, but they also do their best to deny those biological ties (particularly after Abigail's disastrous example of what can happen when those ties are acknowledged for a particular hatchling), and for the most part, they're successful at it. So far as the casual observer would notice, anyway…

Clear skies,

Kimberly T


	7. Ramblings 7

**Kimberly's Ramblings 7: No, I'm Not Anti-Angela**

By Kimberly T. (email: kimbertow AT yahoo etc.)

Yep, I'm rambling again. Pretty soon after the last Rambling, too. I'm always happy to talk about my series and give people more background and insight into the characters than I could reasonably fit into my stories. But I don't usually start jabbering again so soon after a prior Rambling is posted; I wait until several stories (or at least several drabbles) have accumulated in the archives. Then I look over my feedback from emails and ffnet reviews, and determine what the most frequent/probable questions from fans are, that should be answered in a Rambling that will cover all those stories. But this time I got so many emails with negative responses and accusations that I felt it necessary to do this now, so I can state firmly and for the record: No, I am NOT one of those Gargoyles fans who is Anti-Angela.

Seriously, I have never received more emails berating me or informing me that I was horribly wrong in my character portrayals, than I did after posting "Mating Games 12: Game Over." And what did I have done to Angela? She didn't get killed in some horrible manner; she didn't get raped or blinded or deafened or permanently crippled. But she did get slapped, a slap that cut her since it was done with gargoyle talons, and she did get rejected by Broadway. And that, to many people's minds, makes me and my saga Anti-Angela.

I knew ahead of time I was going to get some negative responses over that story; I previously had fans threaten to stop reading my works if I didn't stop what I was doing and start portraying Angela and Broadway to their liking. But I didn't expect quite so much negative response; people whom I've never heard of before emailing me, apparently breaking their vows of silence/habits of lurking without comment for years, just to tell me how wrong I was. Geez, you'd think I'd just ripped apart Goliath and Elisa! I know every fan in every fandom has their OTP, a One True Pairing that's so important to them that they refuse to consider and flat-out denounce any other possibility for either member of the couple. I know I stopped reading all the stories and series that permanently broke up Goliath and Elisa. I just wasn't expecting quite so many people to apparently have Broadway and Angela as an OTP.

Anyway, here I present my justifications to the most frequent responses:

"**Even with the motivation you gave for her to act like that, Angela was still way out of character! She just doesn't treat people like that… especially Broadway**!"

True enough, she didn't treat her clan members like that during the series we saw on TV. But Angela was NOT all sweetness-and-light in all the canon episodes. Remember that fight scene in "Bushido"? Yama, feeling highly insulted by Goliath's insinuation that he was a threat to his own clan (which has to be _**one helluvan insult**_, considering how important clan bonds are to gargoyles; as nasty as insinuating pedophilia for us human types), tackled the _gaijin_ clan leader, went over the side with him and got in a lucky punch that stunned Goliath enough that he hit the ground before he could recover. His honor (really, his pride) satisfied, Yama started to glide away—not going in for the kill, definitely gliding _away_ from Goliath… and Angela pounced on him in midair. She landed right in the middle of his back, and even if gargoyles aren't actually super-sensitive between the wings, I'd still consider that dirty fighting. Then she pounded the snot out of him all the way to the pavement. And even after Taro begged everyone to stop fighting, and Goliath agreed… when Yama growled at Angela, she snarled right back at him, with an expression of sheer hatred that Demona would surely have approved of. From that I conclude that when her buttons are pushed, when provoked, Angela can be just as mean and nasty as anyone else.

I thought I'd already explained to everyone Angela's prejudicial attitude towards Yvette in the 4th Ramblings, but after rereading it, I realized that I'd left something out; something pretty obvious to me, but perhaps not so obvious to everyone else. So I'll point it out here:

Angela, in canon, is a princess.

Yes, as the canon episodes portrayed her, she was a princess. An adventurous princess, to be true, but definitely treated as a princess. Think about it: She demanded, and she ultimately got, special treatment from Goliath. Once she arrived in Manhattan, the Trio were falling all over themselves to court her and impress her. Yes, they squabbled over her, but nobody ever squabbled _**with**_ her, at least not that we ever saw. When she told the Trio off, they immediately agreed with her—and yes, she was absolutely right in everything she said, but that was still a really quick turnaround in their behavior. After all the excitement was over, they approached her quite deferentially, apologized—and apologies don't come easily to most guys, do they?—and said they'd all back off.

And what did she do? She told them all, "Don't back off; just slow down! I like all three of you. But if any thing's going to happen, it'll happen in its own time." For any guys reading this, if you don't already know how to interpret the Girl Code, that speech meant, "You can keep paying attention to me, boys, but on _my_ terms."

When I was a teenager, that was and probably still is every girl's dream; to have all the boys paying attention to her, but on _her_ terms, and never trying to pull anything she doesn't like. A dream that very rarely comes true, even for the popular girls, who frequently have to put up with boyfriends who act much like the Trio had been doing earlier.

But guess what? Angela got what she wanted. Of course she did; she was the clan leader's acknowledged daughter, and the only female in the clan. She was everyone's favorite; their princess.

But princesses also have obligations that come with the titles, in Real Life. In every full-functioning monarchy still in existence, the primary duty of a princess who's sole heir to the throne is…? Repeat after me, everyone: _To provide the next heir._ A fact that Angela became painfully well aware of in my 'verse, probably much faster than she would have in the canon 'verse, because Greg Weisman scheduled the next breeding season for 2007, with eggs to be laid in 2008. I bumped that schedule up by ten years, for the reasons I gave in my "Getting Biblical". Eleven years, the span between 1996 and 2007, is plenty of time for careful consideration and a long, sweet courtship before choosing a mate; a life-partner who'd be with her for the next century-plus (remember, they live twice as long as we do.) But having just one year to make that choice?

Angela was not aware, when she told the boys, "If it happens, it'll happen in its own time," that time was actually against her. But once she talked with her mother (while Demona was captive in the Labyrinth) and Hudson, and became aware… Knowing that you not only _should_ but _**must**_ choose your mate in order to get properly pregnant within a year's time, tends to put pressure on a girl. And the sad fact is that some people perform better than others, under pressure.

So Angela chose Broadway, for the reasons I explained in the last Mating Games story… but still had Brooklyn mooning over her; she had to be aware of that. A fiancé and a 'spare' both paying respectful and caring attention to her? Not a bad thing for her, eh? Which is why she wasn't exactly warm and welcoming to Rebecca, when that female showed up and practically wrapped herself around Brooklyn. But nobody seemed to notice that, in all their disgust with my apparently inserting a Mary Sue into my fic-verse. (Very few people understood at first that the bulk of Rebecca's behavior in Part 2 and the Epilogue of "Comings and Goings" was my mocking tribute to all those Mary Sues in Gargoyles fanfic; poking fun at the way that they just show up out of nowhere and attach themselves to poor Brooklyn! Having to explain a joke, takes all the fun out of it. Sigh.)

But boy, people sure noticed when Angela got downright nasty towards Yvette. Like I said in the fourth Rambling, part of her attitude towards Yvette was due to Yvette's rather uninhibited approach towards Brooklyn. Angela had been taught by Princess Katherine that good girls don't do that sort of thing; therefore, if Yvette was doing it, Yvette must be a bad girl, the kind that Angela shouldn't associate with.

But the other reason is simply that Yvette initially showed interest in Broadway; tail-flirting with him right in front of Angela at the first celebratory dinner. Yvette became, in that instant, Competition and Threat. Neither of which Angela was used to, after several months of being the males' sole love interest back in Manhattan. The attention and the metaphorical 'princess crown' was being taken away from her, she didn't like it one bit, and Yvette's behavior provided an instant focus for that fervent dislike, sharpening it into animosity.

As for Angela's treatment of Broadway… well, if what Yvette, Lucretia and Ursula correctly deduced of Angela's motives and bluntly spelled out in "Game Over" wasn't enough of an explanation for folks, then I don't know what would be.

No, I'm not Anti-Angela. I actually like her, as I like most of the characters I write about. I just don't see a burning need to keep her as the perfect, pristine princess. She's _**people**_, and she's going to make mistakes and screw up sometimes, just like everyone else. And sometimes those screwups affect other people, and have bad repercussions; that's life. And when the shouting and shooting's over, the better people will try to learn from their mistakes, pick themselves up and keep moving forward. I see Angela as one of the better people, so she should learn something from all this.

"**Broadway shouldn't have dumped Angela just because she wanted him to lose weight! Face it, he really does need to lose weight**."

Oh, really? Why? Surely not to make him a more effective warrior, or Goliath would have put him on a diet a long time ago. Greg Weisman didn't produce one single episode where Broadway's weight kept him from beating up bad guys and protecting the innocents as well as his rookery brothers did. And it was pointed out a few times in my stories that it wasn't really necessary for him to lose weight for the breeding flight; that's just the excuse Angela came up with.

Actually, I was surprised and a little disappointed by how few people said a word about when Angela first demanded Broadway lose so much weight in less than a year, back in the first chapter of "The Times, They Are A-Changin'…" It was an unreasonable and even cruel demand; weight loss is _**hard**_ for most people, those who aren't blessed with perpetual high metabolisms or whose formerly high metabolisms were disrupted by serious illness or childbirth. And most doctors recommend _against_ rapid weight loss, because the starvation/extreme overexercising necessary to lose a lot of weight fast isn't healthy for people either. They can suffer from nutrient deficiencies, gallstones, gout, bone density loss… _**Gradual**_ weight loss is good, but rapid weight loss just ain't healthy unless you're being _really _careful, and dedicated to taking fistfuls of nutritional supplements.

I was expecting a serious outcry about Angela's condition for mating; one that didn't happen. If I'd had Angela demand that Broadway have his ears surgically reshaped (it would only hurt for one night, after all), or get hair implants, or do something else to make him resemble Gabriel more, I've no doubt readers would have been screaming. But telling him to lose eighty pounds of body weight in less than a year? I got maybe four comments on that—and one of them was approving! I had to pound on that plot point again and again before some folks finally realized that something wasn't right with that demand… But as my husband pointed out, there's a real prejudice against fat people in this country. It's not as obvious or frowned upon as homophobia or racism, because it's not based on fear like they are. But ask any overweight person if he or she has ever felt like an object of contempt or scorn, and if they think they can really be honest with you, you'll get an earful.

Anyway, I hope the people who continue to read my stories will eventually reconcile themselves to Broadway being with someone else, because I have no plans to break up Broadway and Martha. They're a sweet couple, and over the years they'll evolve into the warm and affectionate heart of the clan, that makes their castle a true home instead of just a safe place to eat and sleep.

"**It just doesn't work, the idea that** **Angela was trying to turn Broadway into another Gabriel. Because if she wanted another clan leader for a mate, then she would have gone for Brooklyn**."

True, she could have. So why didn't I write that? There are plenty of stories and entire sagas out there in which Angela does end up with Brooklyn. But I think there's a major stumbling block to that relationship, and her name is Demona.

Whether you think more happened between the scenes of "Temptation" or not, it was pretty clear that ever since that episode, Brooklyn hates Demona with a vengeance. That raw hatred didn't abate when Angela came onto the scene, even when Angela tried her best to establish a mother-daughter relationship with Demona. I'm pretty sure that's why, in both "The Goliath Chronicles" and the current comics series, Angela hardly gave Brooklyn a second glance when it came to courting efforts. Hey, even if you don't really agree with everything your mother says and does, would you seriously consider marrying a hot babe or stud who absolutely hates her guts?

In most of the stories I've read where Brooklyn and Angela end up together, Brooklyn had to get over that seething hatred of Demona first—not enough to accept her back into the clan or even call her a friend, but enough to no longer desire her very painful death—before Angela would choose him for her mate. Whereas Broadway sees Demona as a foe, yes, but he doesn't hate her and never has; he's just very sensibly wary of her. Big difference, and Angela would appreciate it.

Even beyond pointing out Brooklyn as an alternative for Angela, I've had a lot of people writing me about whom I see Angela with. **"It's just not right"**, the idea of Gabriel and Angela being a couple. Most of those responses also inform me that I'm **"seeing subtext in the episodes that Greg Weisman didn't put there."** To answer that, I first must recommend to everyone this excellent article by someone who's a well-known author in Gargoyles and other fandoms: /news/blogs/20/Canon-Versus-Fanon-Versus-Authorial-Intent.html "Canon Versus Fanon versus Authorial Intent." (Google on that exact phrase if you can't see or click on the link.) It should be required reading for several fandoms, not just Gargoyles; it might have settled a lot of nasty flame-wars I've heard about before they started, if both sides had read it first. Anyway, it shouldn't need saying that I like and respect Greg Weisman's work and views. But I also agree with Merlin Missy's assertions and reasoning as to why Authorial Intent is not necessarily canon, and subtext in canon is open to personal interpretation.

I'm pretty sure I've said this at least once before; I was writing fanfic for Gargoyles for a long time, based on what I saw in the canon episodes, before another fanfic author told me that Greg Weisman was actively adding background to the Gargoyles universe in his "Ask Greg" archives. By the time I found those archives and read Greg's assertion that Gabriel actually was in love with Ophelia (whom he touched just once in all the Avalon-based episodes, helping her limp to Guardian Tom's side after she'd been wounded by Demona. With as much concern on his face for Ophelia that Angela later showed for Brooklyn, after he was badly zapped by Demona in "The Reckoning." And we're supposed to infer a passionate relationship from just that?), my interpretations of the characters and a large part of the storyline were already set in my head.

I'm not going to try to warp my series back to incorporate the new material coming out in the comics; that'd be impossible at this point without inducing some "Crisis on Infinite Earths"-type reworking of everything. And I'm not going to rework my series to please the fans and have Broadway and Angela fall in love all over again, even though I'm quite happy to read the better stories where they are truly in love and happy together. Yes, I do think Angela and Broadway could make a nice couple, and there are some lovely Broadway and Angela stories out there; just not mine. Sorry, folks; I hope you'll keep reading anyway, but if not, I'll understand.

So that's that. And now, after pages of insisting over and over that I did not make a mistake, I'll admit to a mistake. One that has nothing to do with Broadway or Angela!

As some of you readers know by now, I plot a lot of my story material out years in advance, but a lot of minor points are left until actually writing the story in question and quite frequently, small mutations in the plot, setting etc. creep in at the last minute. So after finishing a story, I wait a couple of weeks before posting it and read it over at least four times in the interim, trying to make sure that nothing happened that would derail a future big plot point, or contradicted something that was already established. Continuity and consistency are very important to me (which is the biggest reason why I stopped reading DC and Marvel comics… but I digress.)

I try hard to make sure a story has no errors and does have everything it needs for the storyline, before I post it. And of course, there's always at least one error that I don't find until AFTER posting; sometimes I don't find it myself at all, and another sharp-eyed reader has to point it out to me. Which is why I grant myself one re-post per story, to fix errors found late. But if an error in one story isn't discovered until after the next story is posted, it doesn't get fixed; I mucked up my story archive order enough that way in the early years, and promised not to do it anymore.

Which is why, when a thorough reader wrote to me with **"The female gargoyle who's Martin's mate and Guilliame's assistant … is her name Cecilia, Celia or Cecelia? I read through the whole story arc again, and I saw it spelled all three ways in different stories,**" I winced and muttered to myself, "Damn, I was hoping no one would catch that."

Well… her name should probably be Cecilia, because that's the way the saint's name was spelled in the Catholic Saints and Martyrs index that I found online, and the gargoyles of the New Orleans clan have a tradition of naming themselves after Catholic saints and martyrs. But I prefer the spelling Cecelia, and I started spelling it that way after coming back from the hiatus. Yep, a blatant inconsistency on my part, but at least I'm owning up to it. As for the story in which I spelled it Celia, that was just sheer absent-mindedness on my part and not checking thoroughly enough before posting. I didn't notice the screwup until at least two stories later; far too late to fix.

I also had a couple readers who reread the Mating Games story arc from start to finish, point out what they thought was another inconsistency on my part. "**In Mating Games 11, Father Maurice, Barnabas, and other gargoyles objected to Lexington, Robert and Marie becoming mates. But back in Mating Games 9, they didn't object to the idea of multiple mates when it was mentioned in that bull session!"**

'Bull session' is referring to that closed-door session of the clan leaders and elders. And when the idea of having some clan males take more than one female for mates was brought up in that meeting, Father Maurice and Barnabas were both present and they did indeed say nothing against it. For three reasons:

(1) Long before they found out about the Manhattan Clan's existence, the New Orleans clan had been facing the dilemma of far-more-females-than-males-available and debating what to do about it. With their numbers so small, the clan simply could not afford to let those single females go without breeding eggs for the clan during the upcoming breeding moon, and for the past decade—actually, ever since that extraordinary rookery clutch first hatched—they'd been debating what to do about it. It was an old issue, unlike the idea of introducing the ladies to the gargoyle clones still up in Manhattan (which Father Maurice did indeed vehemently object to in that meeting, as some of you may recall.)

(2) There had already been plenty of objection to the idea of taking multiple mates, chiefly from the youngsters themselves. Oh, most of the males of that generation were rather agreeable to the idea, but even though they grew up together and mostly regarded each other as friends, the females didn't want to share mates. (Particular not where Marie was concerned.) Neither Barnabas nor Father Maurice objected during the meeting because they didn't have to; Ignatius stated that the idea wouldn't work out in practically the same breath.

(3) There is plenty of Biblical precedence for bigamy. Back when the Bible was written, women were chattel; just a step above livestock in property value. (And they're still regarded that way in many parts of the world, including some sects right here in the U.S., but I digress.) Several heroes of the Bible had multiple wives; Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, Solomon, etc. So actually, Father Maurice could find justification for males having multiple female mates. But for a female having two male mates? Oh, that's just _wrong_, by his thinking. And he and several other clan members have the usual bigotry against homosexuals, too, which the religious folks justify by referring to just one verse in the same chapter of Leviticus that also forbids eating lobster, serving dishes that combine milk with meat (no cheeseburgers!?), men shaving, etc.

And one more thing I feel the need to mention, after I got a surprising/appalling number of comments about how sneaky, underhanded, cruel, callous and _wicked_ a person Ursula turned out to be. There were some who wanted Ursula's secret outed as soon as possible, so Hudson would divorce the bitch and boot her butt back to New Orleans. The first time I read one of those, I literally backed away from the monitor, I was so shocked. Here's where viewer/reader interpretation comes into play again, because that's not what I intended at all!

I did a big spiel in the last Rambling about how the habits and attitudes of parenthood can sneak up on some folks, even when they're trying not to show favoritism. Which, as one very alert reader correctly deduced (nods to 'The Sadistic Cow'), was a very big hint that Ursula was favoring one of the young adult generation due to a biological relationship; the last piece in the puzzle that had clues and hints scattered throughout most of the Mating Games series. Ursula knows Martha is her daughter; the resemblance between them is too close to deny. And even though she's tried hard to deny that relationship and treat Martha as just any other child of the clan for decades, the fact is that she subconsciously favors Martha. If we were talking about all human characters, no one would blink an eye at that; in fact, there'd probably be some folks looking askance if she didn't favor her daughter at least a little bit.

Ursula noticed by scent that Broadway wasn't mated when they were introduced before the first big dinner in New Orleans, and silently observed him and the other two single young males for the rest of the feast. Within the hour, she had the basic personalities of the Trio pegged, and she decided that of the three, good-natured and considerate Broadway would make the best mate for Martha, a sweet, amiable and clever young lady who provided the clan with good meals _and_ an income on the side from her books, and who surely deserved a mate of her own. And who happens to be Ursula's daughter, but Ursula told herself that wasn't really the reason why she did what she did.

And what Ursula did was indeed subtle and sneaky and manipulative, but wasn't a patch on what some parents have done for their children in Real Life. From something as small as broadly hinting the correct answer for a difficult homework problem, to something as major as resulting in felony charges, parents have done a lot for their kids. Ask any college admissions officer what some parents have done to try to get their kids into college, and you'll hear some amazing and appalling stories. Compared to those, a mother simply arranging for her daughter to spend plenty of time with a boy that she knew would treat her right, ain't nuthin a'tall.

Yes, in doing what she could to improve Martha's chances of getting a good mate, Ursula treated Angela quite callously. It was wrong of her to do what she did, but as I keep saying, I see these gargoyles as people, who daily have to choose to do the right thing just as we do. And just as we do, sometimes they do the wrong thing, for what they think is a very good reason. So no, Ursula isn't a bad person. She's a mother, that's all.

I was about to end this with "I hope that satisfies everyone" but I realize now that that just ain't gonna happen, not with all that's happened in the storyline recently. But I will say that I hope this is the last Rambling I feel the need to do for a long while!

Clear skies,

Kimberly


	8. Ramblings 8: Crossover Queries

**Kimberly's Ramblings 8: More Crossover Queries**

By Kimberly T. (email: kimbertow AT yahoo etc.)

Greetings! Just taking the opportunity to publicly answer the most frequently asked questions from readers of my most recent story "Deadly Moon", as well as one question that's been occasionally asked by readers for the last couple of years.

…Though the answer to one question is really just a _hint_ instead an answer.

**Who was behind the two gargoyle-costumed humans that broke into the Quarryman's apartment?**

Someone who was featured in the story, appearing no less than three times. And that's all I'm going to say right now, because while several readers have already guessed the answer, the full revelation—the story behind the quick answer of 'whodunnit', explaining 'whydunnit'—is still a long time away in the series.

**Who was the Alpha that appeared to the Were-Fox on the rooftop, and in that culvert? …Was that Vincent from 'Beauty and the Beast?'**

Yes, indeed. The Alpha is an under-explored aspect of Vincent's character from the series 'Beauty and the Beast' (hereafter referred to as B&tB). It was established in the series episode "Everything is Everything" that Vincent is not only empathic with Catherine but has some control over, or means of communicating with, other animals. It's actually the only episode in which Vincent interacted with any animals except the raccoon Arthur, Mouse's pet (and now that I think about it, I can't recall any scenes that had Vincent and Arthur in the same room together.) In "Everything is Everything," Vincent made a pack of trained attack dogs that were threatening Catherine, back off and lie down just by looking at them. He didn't snarl, growl or give any outward show of aggression; he just stood there and looked at them, and they went from snarling attack mode to whining submission to him. Several B&tB fans, myself included, deduced from that scene that Vincent's empathic powers extend to at least part of the animal kingdom, making him a figurative King of the Beasts.

In my series Vincent's Alpha aspect, his power over other creatures, is why the Were-Fox was mostly regarded just as another part of the overall New York Weirdness by the cops in "Eye of the Beholder", instead of a deadly threat to be shot on sight (or even hunted down in a citywide effort, cornered and shot). One thing that the episode made very clear was that the Were-Fox was constantly hungry—not just in the mood for a midnight snack, but _**hungry**_. The kind of desperate hunger that makes wild coyotes venture down into suburbia to grab pets out of backyards, and the Were-Fox is much, much bigger than a coyote. And yet, all they depicted the Were-Fox going for was protein-rich groceries; cold, refrigerated eggs, milk and meat from stores and meat-packing companies. While carnivores definitely prefer their food warm; preferably blood-warm, when they can get it. So why didn't the Were-Fox, desperate for food, take a bite out of any of those weak, warm-bodied humans that throng the streets of Manhattan?

Because she'd been told not to, by the Alpha. Even now that he has a wife and children to look after in the world Below, Vincent still makes occasional forays to the world Up Top, as they called it in the series; especially in the month of October, when most people catching a glimpse of him would assume he's just wearing out a Halloween costume on his way to a party. On Fox's first foray as the Were-Fox, she had an encounter with Vincent, who had an immediate moral dilemma; he recognized that the Were-Fox could be a deadly danger to the people of New York, but also sensed that she was human in her essence. So he finally told her that he would let her roam free so long as she didn't hurt any humans, and she obeyed the Alpha. And no, I'm not mistaking foxes for wolves, who have a hierarchal pack structure with an Alpha Wolf at the top, or for dogs that had been bred over the millennia to accept humans as their pack Alphas. I know very well that foxes don't run in packs, any more than feral cats do. But even living mostly solitary lives, foxes occasionally do have power plays over territories and choice of mates, and a subtle hierarchy of dominance can be observed when they're forced into close quarters. And Vincent's empathic power, with the dominance granted him by his very nature, makes him The Alpha of any species that recognizes dominance.

**Is Dana in your series really Laura from Beauty and the Beast?**

No, Dana is not Laura, the deaf woman of the tunnels that B&tB mostly took place in. But she is from that same community Below.

In B&tB, it was explained that Laura had been found by the community Below as a child, abandoned by her parents because they just couldn't deal with her deafness. The Tunnel people took her in, but as they didn't know Sign language at first, they had a difficult time communicating with Laura, and she still frequently felt isolated from everyone while growing up. As was shown by those heart-breaking scenes with Laura holding ticking clocks and other noisemakers up to her ear, trying to hear them by sheer force of will but never succeeding… Laura desperately wished she could hear like everyone else, believing that was all she needed to be accepted by the world and be happy.

Dana came to the community Below six years later, and she's younger than Laura; during the 1987-1989 time period depicted in the B&tB series, she was one of the crowd of kids that were roughly Samantha and Kipper's age. Dana wasn't abandoned by her parents; they died in a fire when she was four years old. And unlike Laura's parents who were unable to cope, Dana's parents had been learning sign language and teaching it to their daughter before they died. When little Dana fled the foster home she'd been put in and began wandering the streets, looking for her parents (the one person in the local Social Services office who knew sign language had told Dana that her parents had 'gone away', not that they were dead), she was found by one of the community's Helpers and brought Below.

The ID tag Dana's parents had made for her in case of emergency, which Dana wore around her neck, told the people Below where she had come from. And when they visited the address and saw the gutted wreck of her home, and overheard the street talk about the people that had died there, there was no question in anyone's minds about making a home for Dana in their world Below. By that time, Laura had been living below for six years already, and everyone who was interested in learning sign language had already learned it. So Dana had no real problem communicating with the people down there, and she rarely felt the crushing sense of isolation that Laura had so often felt. Dana would _**like**_ to be able to hear just like most people can, but she can get along just fine from day to day and she has a healthy self-esteem; she's happy with who she is.

Dana is also Father John Sullivan's link to first the community Below, then the Labyrinth. Dana and her parents had members of the catholic priest's parish when he'd accepted his posting there; the October family had been delighted to learn that their new priest knew sign language, and had discussed plans with Father Sullivan to teach a Sunday School class in sign language. But the parents died in the fire just a few months later, and when Dana disappeared from the foster home only a day after being taken there by Social Services, Father Sullivan spearheaded the efforts to find her. He put up 'Missing' signs all over, and eventually a member of the community Below found one of the signs while scrounging for goods they could use. Little Dana had been below for ten days by that time, and had already settled in and become reasonably happy there (children can be quick to adapt to changed circumstances, particularly when welcomed and accepted for who they are.) So Mary, foster mother to most of the orphan children Below, decided to visit the priest herself and see what sort of life Dana could expect if she went back Above.

However, Mary's not as good as she'd like to be at keeping secrets while seeking information from others. Father Sullivan figured out from the strange woman's questions about how an orphaned deaf child would fare, that she was acquainted with Dana and probably knew where Dana was. So when Mary left, the priest decided to follow her. He managed to track her as far as the nearest entrance to Below, but got lost in the tunnels and wandered for hours, before a sentry took pity on him and guided him back to the surface. Guided him back with a warning to never come below the city streets again, but Father Sullivan is a stubborn man. He came back the next day with a sack lunch and a sleeping bag, retraced his steps to the point where the sentry had met him, then sat down and refused to budge until he saw Dana with his own eyes, and confirmed that she was happy where she was. Eventually they relented and Mary brought Dana to him, with Vincent lurking in the shadows as an unseen guardian.

In the midst of their joyful reunion, Father Sullivan signed a series of questions to Dana, asking her if she was happy and what her new friends were like. Dana replied in Sign that she was happy, and she had made lots of friends, including Samantha and Kipper and Vincent the big lion-man. Mary swallowed hard but said nothing, and Father Sullivan asked if he could meet this Vincent. He'd thought Dana was referring to a giant stuffed animal, but the little girl hopped to her feet and ran back down the tunnel before Mary could stop her; ran straight to where Vincent was lurking in the shadows, and started tugging on his cloak hem… and the rest is history. Father Sullivan has been one of the Helpers to the community Below ever since. And since the events of 'Revelations of the Labyrinth', he's been a helper to the Labyrinth as well. Dana is 20 years old in 1996; rather young to be married to Claw (he's 27), but they're happy together.

Claw knows about the community Below, as does Malibu (how that happened, was explained in 'Kimberly's Ramblings 4'), but they're keeping their promises to tell no one else in the Labyrinth about the other community living below the city streets. The world Below depends on secrecy even more than the Labyrinth does for its survival, or at least the survival of one of its people; Vincent's wife Catherine, who is still wanted by the Illuminati. Heinrich knows about Vincent, whom he met briefly in 'Housing Issues', but not about the community Below; he's currently under the impression that Vincent lives in the Labyrinth with Malibu. And now that Heinrich is up in the castle and accepted by the gargoyles living there, and has no compelling reason to fight his claustrophobia and visit the Labyrinth Clan (other than to see Malibu, but Malibu is also welcome to visit the castle), he's not apt to discover his error any time soon.

Clear skies,

Kimberly T.


End file.
